PDF OCR in 100+ Languages: Extract Text From Scanned Documents Online
May 19, 2026
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. In plain terms: you give it a PDF that looks like a photograph (no selectable text), and it gives you back a version where the text is copyable, searchable, and pasteable into other documents.
This guide explains when you need OCR, why most free tools fail on non-English scripts, and how to use the PDF OCR tool for any language - including mixing two languages on the same page.
When You Need OCR
Scanned contracts and forms. When someone prints a document, signs it, and scans it back to PDF, the resulting file is essentially a photo. No text layer exists. A legal team that wants to search the contract for a clause must read it manually - unless they OCR it first.
Photographed receipts. Taking a photo of a paper receipt on your phone produces a JPEG or a camera-roll PDF with zero selectable text. Expense management software needs actual text to auto-fill vendor names and amounts.
Old book and archive scans. Digitized newspapers, court records, academic journals, and government archives are often scanned page by page. Libraries and researchers who want to search or quote from them need OCR to unlock the text.
Non-digital ID documents. Passports, national ID cards, and driver's licenses submitted as photos during KYC or onboarding need to be read by automated systems. OCR bridges the gap between a photo and a structured record.
Why Most Free OCR Tools Fail on Non-Latin Scripts
Most free OCR tools ship with English-only language packs. Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean use scripts that are fundamentally different from the Latin alphabet. An English-only OCR engine sees these characters as noise and produces garbled output - or nothing at all.
Even tools that advertise "multi-language" support often ship three or four Western European languages and call it done. If your document is in Arabic or Tamil, you're out of luck.
PDF Studio uses Tesseract OCR - the most widely used open-source engine - with a curated set of language packs that cover the scripts most commonly found in scanned documents worldwide.
Languages We Support
The following 16 language packs ship with the tool. Select one (or combine them - more on that below):
| Language | Tesseract Code |
|---|---|
| English | eng |
| Bengali / Bangla | ben |
| Spanish | spa |
| French | fra |
| German | deu |
| Hindi | hin |
| Arabic | ara |
| Chinese Simplified | chi_sim |
| Chinese Traditional | chi_tra |
| Japanese | jpn |
| Korean | kor |
| Portuguese | por |
| Russian | rus |
| Italian | ita |
| Dutch | nld |
| Turkish | tur |
If your language isn't on this list, check the tool's language picker - the dropdown includes additional Tesseract-supported languages beyond the 16 highlighted here.
3-Step Walkthrough
Step 1: Upload your PDF. Open PDF OCR and drag your file onto the upload area, or click to browse. Files up to 100 MB are accepted. Multi-page PDFs work fine - every page is processed.
Step 2: Pick your language. Select the language that matches the text in your document. If the PDF has a digital text layer on some pages (common in hybrid documents), the tool will use that layer directly and only run OCR on pages that need it.
Step 3: Download your text.
Click Extract text. When processing completes, a text panel appears. You can
copy the text directly or click Download to save it as a .txt file.
That's it. No account, no watermark on output.
Mixing Two Languages on One Page
Some documents mix languages - a business contract might have English headings with Spanish body text, or a translated academic paper might show English and Chinese on the same spread.
Tesseract handles this by accepting combined language codes separated by a +
character:
- English + Spanish:
eng+spa - English + Simplified Chinese:
eng+chi_sim - English + Arabic:
eng+ara - English + Bengali:
eng+ben - French + Arabic:
fra+ara
In the tool's language picker, select "Custom combination" (or whichever option surfaces the code field) and type the combined code. The engine will apply both language models simultaneously, which usually improves accuracy on mixed-script pages compared to picking just one.
Tips for Best Results
Scan at 300 DPI or higher. Image resolution is the single biggest factor in OCR accuracy. A scan at 72 DPI - the default for many smartphone camera apps - will produce noticeably worse results than one at 300 DPI. If you're scanning paper documents, use a dedicated scanner or a scanning app that lets you set resolution.
Plain, white backgrounds. Photos of documents lying on patterned tablecloths, in dim lighting, or at an angle OCR significantly worse than flat, well-lit scans. If possible, place the document on a white surface and photograph straight down.
Expect lower accuracy for handwriting. Tesseract is trained on printed text. Handwritten content - especially cursive - is outside its core competency. Printed documents, typewritten text, and digitally composed documents (even when scanned) all give better results than handwriting.
For hybrid PDFs, leave "Force OCR" off. If your PDF has some pages with existing text layers and some scanned pages, the tool will automatically detect which is which and only run the OCR engine where needed. Forcing OCR on pages that already have text can actually degrade quality.
Large files may take longer. A 50-page, high-DPI scan will take more time than a 3-page letter. Processing happens server-side and scales with page count and image size. Be patient on large archives.
Privacy
Your PDF is uploaded over an encrypted HTTPS connection, processed, and automatically deleted from the server within one hour. Files are not used for training, not shared with third parties, and not retained for analytics. No account is associated with your upload - there's no way to link a file to a person.
Ready to Try It?
Upload a scanned PDF and select your language. Results appear within seconds for short documents. For questions or issues, use the feedback link on the tool page.