Extract Text from PDF — Free Online PDF OCR
Copy-paste only works on text-based PDFs. If your PDF is a scan — or was exported as images — the text is locked in the picture. Upload it and OCR extracts every word into editable text in seconds, including multi-page documents, tables and 47 languages.
Example result
Sample extraction — a scanned PDF page to text
| Page | Extracted content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Q3 Financial Report — Income Statement |
| 1 | Revenue: $1,240,000 Costs: $782,000 |
| 2 | Balance Sheet — Assets / Liabilities table |
| 3 | Notes to Financial Statements (4 paragraphs) |
How it works
- 1Upload your file or scan — PDF, photo, or screenshot.
- 2Our AI reads and extracts the content in seconds.
- 3Download, copy, or export to the format you need.
Frequently asked questions
Why can't I copy text from my PDF?
If the PDF has no text layer — typically because it was scanned or printed-to-PDF from images — there's nothing to select. OCR reads the pixels and recreates the text, which is exactly what this tool does.
Does it work on multi-page PDFs?
Yes. Every page is processed — up to 200 pages per file on paid plans. The free tier handles 10 pages per day. Each page's text is extracted in order.
Can it handle tables and columns?
Yes. The AI understands layout: tables are re-flowed into rows/columns, multi-column articles keep their reading order, and you can export as Excel to keep tables structured.
What about encrypted or password-protected PDFs?
Files must be openable to be processed. If a PDF has an open-password, unlock it locally before uploading — we don't process passwords. Standard copy restrictions are usually fine since we read pixels, not the text layer.
Supported files & languages
Works with PDF, PNG, JPG, JPEG, WebP, DOCX and XLSX files up to 200MB. Recognizes 47 languages including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Arabic. No software to install.