OCR PDF Online Free – Make Scanned PDFs Searchable & Selectable

Add a searchable, selectable text layer to scanned PDFs with AI-powered OCR. Supports 25+ languages. Copy and search text from any scanned document. Free, no signup.

Select a scanned PDF to process

Drag & drop your scanned PDF file here

PDF files only · Up to 100 MB

How it works

Make a PDF searchable in 3 simple steps

No software to install. Works on any device with a modern browser - desktop, tablet or mobile.

01

Upload your scanned PDF

Click "Select PDF file" or drag and drop your scanned document. SupaPDF accepts files up to 100 MB.

02

Choose the document language

Select the language of the text in your scan. Choosing the correct language dramatically improves recognition accuracy for all scripts.

03

Download the searchable PDF

Click "Run OCR" and receive a PDF with an invisible text layer overlaid on the original scan - fully searchable and copy-paste ready.

Why SupaPDF

Everything you need to OCR a PDF

Trusted by developers and businesses worldwide to make scanned documents searchable reliably and at scale.

Full-text search

Once processed, any PDF viewer - including Adobe Reader, Chrome, and macOS Preview - can search every word on every page of your document.

Private & secure

All uploads use encrypted HTTPS. Your files are permanently deleted from our servers immediately after your download is complete.

30+ languages supported

From English and German to Japanese, Arabic, and Chinese - choose the correct language for your scan to maximise recognition accuracy.

Full developer API

Automate OCR at scale using our REST API. Pass the language code in the task payload and poll for the result - all in one job.

Developer API

Run OCR on PDFs programmatically

Use our REST API to add searchable text layers to scanned PDFs in your own application or data pipeline.

curl -X POST https://api.supapdf.com/v1/jobs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "tag": "ocr-pdf-job",
    "tasks": {
      "upload-1": {
        "operation": "import/upload"
      },
      "ocr": {
        "operation": "ocr_pdf",
        "input": ["upload-1"],
        "language": "eng"
      },
      "export-result": {
        "operation": "export/url",
        "input": ["ocr"]
      }
    }
  }'

Set language to a Tesseract language code such as "eng", "deu", "fra", or "chi_sim". After creating the job, PUT your file to the upload_url, then poll GET /v1/jobs/:id?include=tasks until status is "finished". The searchable PDF URL is in the export-result task.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Everything you need to know about adding OCR text layers to PDF files with SupaPDF.

Ready to make your PDF searchable?

Free to use · No account required · Instant download