What image formats does the OCR tool support?

Tesseract.js supports common image formats including JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, and WEBP. For best results, use PNG or high-quality JPEG images with clear, high-contrast text. Very low-resolution images or heavily compressed JPEGs may produce poor recognition results. If your source is a PDF, converting individual pages to high-resolution PNG images before processing will yield better accuracy than working from the PDF directly.

How accurate is browser-based OCR?

Tesseract.js accuracy is highest on clearly printed text with good contrast and a clean background — under ideal conditions, accuracy exceeds 95%. Handwriting, decorative fonts, text on complex backgrounds, low-resolution scans, and skewed documents all reduce accuracy significantly. For production-quality OCR of large document volumes, cloud OCR APIs with neural network backends (like Google Cloud Vision or AWS Textract) achieve higher accuracy on difficult inputs.

Which languages does the OCR tool support?

The tool currently supports English, Simplified Chinese (Mandarin as written in mainland China), and Traditional Chinese (as written in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau). These language models are loaded in the browser when you use the tool. Adding additional Tesseract language packs for other scripts (like Arabic, Japanese, or Korean) would require downloading additional model files.

How do I get better OCR results from my image?

The most impactful improvements come from image quality. Use high-resolution scans at 300 DPI or higher rather than phone camera photos when possible. Ensure high contrast between text and background (dark text on white paper is ideal). Straighten skewed images before processing. Remove shadows and glare from photos of physical documents. If text appears in multiple columns, cropping to individual columns before processing can improve recognition order and accuracy.

document_scanner

FreeNo Upload

OCR Tool

Extract text from images via cloud recognition. Supports English and Chinese Simplified/Traditional.

text_fieldsWord Counter qr_code_2QR Code passwordPassword scheduleTimezone travel_exploreIP Lookup document_scannerOCR location_onUS Address

cloudImages are processed via cloud recognition to extract text

Recognition Language

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Upload File

JPG, PNG, WebP

How to Use

upload_file

Upload an image with text

Select an image containing text — screenshots, scanned documents, or photos of signs. Supported formats: JPEG, PNG, WebP. Max file size: 50 MB.

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Select language and process

Choose the text language (English, Simplified Chinese, or Traditional Chinese). Click Extract Text. First run downloads language data (~10-20 MB) — subsequent runs are faster.

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Copy or download text

Review the extracted text, make corrections in the editor, then copy to clipboard or download as a .txt file. The text area is editable for easy fixes.

What is OCR Tool?

The OCR tool extracts text from images entirely in the browser using Tesseract.js, a WebAssembly port of the industry-standard Tesseract OCR engine, with no image data ever sent to a server. It supports English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese text recognition. This free browser-based OCR tool is ideal for extracting text from screenshots, scanned documents, and photos of printed material.

Why use OCR Tool?

Client-side processing is the defining feature — because Tesseract.js runs locally in your browser, sensitive documents like contracts, medical records, or ID cards are never uploaded anywhere, making this OCR tool safe for private content. Support for Chinese character recognition alongside English makes it useful for bilingual documents and East Asian language content. No registration, file size upload limits, or per-page fees apply.

lockComplete privacy — Your files never leave your device or browser.
boltInstant processing — No wait times, no server queues, no upload delays.
money_off100% free — No subscriptions, no credits, no hidden fees.
person_offNo registration — Start using immediately, no account needed.
devicesWorks everywhere — Any modern browser on desktop, tablet, or mobile.

How it works

Students photograph textbook pages and extract readable text for note-taking or translation using this tool. Professionals receive scanned PDFs or image-based documents and use it to extract text for editing in word processors. Developers testing OCR pipelines use it to quickly benchmark Tesseract accuracy on their specific document types before committing to a backend implementation.

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Pro Tip

OCR accuracy improves significantly with higher-resolution images and strong contrast between text and background — if your result has many errors, try increasing the image resolution to at least 300 DPI and ensuring the text appears dark on a light background before reprocessing.

Frequently Asked Questions

No — all OCR processing runs locally in your browser using Tesseract.js, a WebAssembly-compiled version of the Tesseract OCR engine. Your image data never leaves your device. This makes the tool safe for processing sensitive documents like contracts, medical records, financial statements, and personal identification documents that you would not want to upload to a third-party server.

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Tutorial