OCR PDF – Extract Text from Scans & Images

About this tool

The UnblockPDF OCR tool uses optical character recognition technology to extract text from scanned PDF documents and images, transforming them into searchable and editable content. The OCR processing runs on the server side, where advanced text recognition engines analyze the visual patterns in your scanned pages and convert them into machine-readable text with high accuracy. The tool accepts PDF files including multi-page scanned documents, as well as image files in JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, and WebP formats. It supports over thirteen languages including English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Korean, and Arabic. For documents containing text in multiple languages, you can select several recognition languages simultaneously to achieve the best possible accuracy across all content. Three output format options are available. Searchable PDF adds an invisible text layer over the original scanned images, preserving the visual appearance while making the content findable with text search. Text Only extracts the recognized text into a plain text file, which is useful when you need the raw content for data processing or text analysis. PDF/A produces an archival-compliant version with the embedded text layer, combining searchability with long-term preservation guarantees. You can adjust the scan quality setting from 150 to 600 DPI (dots per inch). Higher DPI settings improve recognition accuracy, especially for small text or low-quality scans, but increase processing time. For most business documents scanned at standard quality, 300 DPI provides an optimal balance between accuracy and speed. The tool processes each page individually and reports a confidence score indicating the reliability of the text recognition for that page. Common use cases include digitizing paper document archives for searchable electronic storage, making scanned contracts and agreements text-searchable for legal review, converting scanned receipts and invoices into searchable records for accounting, extracting text from photographed documents captured with mobile devices, and creating accessible versions of scanned documents for screen reader compatibility. For clean scans at 300 DPI, expect recognition accuracy between 95 and 99 percent for Latin-based languages. The tool supports files up to 50 MB for anonymous users and 100 MB for registered accounts.

Common use cases

Tips for best results

• Select 300 DPI for standard business documents and increase to 600 DPI only for small text or low-quality scans needing extra precision.
• Choose multiple recognition languages when your document contains text in more than one language for the best overall accuracy.
• After OCR, use the Convert from PDF tool to export the searchable PDF to editable Word format for content editing.
• For the best recognition results, ensure scanned pages are straight and evenly lit, as skewed or shadowed scans reduce accuracy.