Easy Screen OCR

Currently, there are some users who ask me if EasyScreenOCR can OCR scanned PDF documents. They do not want to retype and reformat the original pdf again. Well, actually, EasyScreenOCR is not born for PDF documents but it is the best and handy Win/Mac software that OCR any images you have captured on your computer screen. It is not quite easy to OCR PDF files with multiple pages but you can still capture one image of the PDF when it is opening and then extract text from the image.

Frankly speaking, EasyScreenOCR is not the ultimate solution for PDF OCR, especially when you want to convert a PDF file containing scanned images to editable Word documents. I really thought hard about this, After several hours of hard work, I have tested several PDF OCR online tools, make some deep analysis, and then, post this article so you will know the results.

How I choose these online tools for testing

Rule 1. First of all, I only test the online tools and ignore this offline software like Adobe Acrobat, Wondershare PDF, and other software.

Rule 2. I use the keywords like “PDF OCR”, “Scanned PDF to Word” and find these tools from Google results.

Rule 3. I use the same PDF document and check the result.

The list I have used for PDF OCR testing.

#1 PDF OCR (https://pdf-ocr.com)

#2 PDF24Tools (https://tools.pdf24.org/en/ocr-pdf)

#3 Free Online OCR (https://www.onlineocr.net/)

#4 OCR Space (https://ocr.space/)

#5 Sejda OCR Online (https://www.sejda.com/ocr-pdf)

#6 NewOCR (https://www.newocr.com/)

#7 FreePDFOnline (https://freepdfonline.com/ocrpdf/)

#8 DeftPDF (https://deftpdf.com/ocr-pdf)

#9 AvePDF (https://avepdf.com/en/pdf-ocr)

Overview of each tool and the result

#1 PDF OCR

PDFOCR is a professional tool that focuses on PDF OCR and scanned PDF to Word document. It allows you to upload PDF with a size of no more than 50MB pages less than 30 pages. Convert them to editable Word files within only one click.

I have uploaded the PDF and the uploading process is fast. Only a few minutes, I can see a download button that I can get the Word file. Here is the comparison picture that you can see the detailed result.

The result approves the high quality of the conversion. The Word file retains the format as much as possible like the original PDF file. More importantly, the accuracy is super high. You can use it directly with only a few editing.

There is one feature I like most. You can leave your email address and get the notification when the conversion finished. It is user-friendly if you want to upload and convert a large PDF with multiple image pages. No need to wait and keep the page opened. Just wait for your email inbox and download the Word file there.

#Pros:

1. Free, fast, and accuracy is super high.
2. Support batch process and scanned PDF to editable Word file.
3. You can get an email notification once the conversion is done.

#Cons:

1. Some limitations like pages and pdf size.

#2 PDF24Tools

PDF24Tools is a free online tool that includes all possible pdf tools that you may use. I have uploaded my original scanned pdf. It takes only a few minutes to process the scanned PDF and return back a download link. You can get it downloaded, but, it is not an editable Word file. It is a searchable PDF document. This means that you need to use another tool to convert the PDF to Word again. From the downloaded PDF, we found that all words could be copied and the accuracy is quite high.

Here is the OCR result and searchable PDF (Not Word document):

#Pros:

1. Free and no account required. High accuracy.
2. Some advanced options like remove background, clean pages, force OCR.
3. No other limits

#Cons:

1. Do not support converting scanned PDF to editable Word document.

#3 Free Online OCR

FreeOnlineOCR is an online tool that provides free OCR services, PDF OCR is included either. You can select the PDF file and OCR languages, as well as the output format. Of course, this tool supports PDF to editable Word files. Let’s see how it performs.

Just like before, I upload the PDF and select English. Here is the downloaded Word file. As we can see from the comparison, the output word file keeps the format of the original PDF document perfectly. The character accuracy is quite high.

#Pros:

1. Free and no account required. High accuracy.
2. Support 45 OCR languages.
3. Support converting scanned PDF to Word file.

#Cons:

1. Do not support the batch process.
2. Only allow converting 15 images per hour.

#4 OCR Space

OCR Space is another online tool powered by an advanced OCR engine. It could enlarge content and rotate image automatically and create Searchable PDF for free. It provides two OCR engines that you can choose the better one according to the results. I upload the same PDF, select English, start OCR. Unlucky, the OCR engine can only convert the scanned pdf to txt but when converting to searchable PDF, it failed.

I have tried several times and, finally, it recognizes the characters in the image pages successfully and extracts them into a text file. However, it could not support converting scanned pdf to a text file and that is not what I want.

#Pros:

1. Free and fast.
2. Support copying URL and OCR.

#Cons:

1. Do not support the batch process.
2. Do not support Word as the output format.

#5 Sejda OCR Online

Sejda is a powerful online tool that supports not only PDF conversion, creation, and also PDF editing. It uses its own OCR engine to recognize characters and extract them from images and scanned pdf files. Unluckily, it doesn’t support converting scanned pdf to Word document either. You can only choose the searchable PDF and Text as the output format. From my test, it takes a longer time than other OCR tools when processing this two-pages scanned PDF, and finally, it fails.

#Pros:

1. Easy to use and support selecting the pages that you want to OCR.

#Cons:

1. Failed to OCR during my test.
2. Do not support the Batch process.
3. Do not support converting PDF to editable Word files.

#6 NewOCR

NewOCR provides free online OCR services and you can extract the text from the uploaded scanned PDF files. It is the simplest and free online tool that you can have a try. I upload my scanned pdf, click the “Preview” button, and hope it could give me some surprise.

However, during my test, it takes quite a long time for uploading. But finally, it completes the OCR task but shows some error message like below. What’s worse, it only recognizes the first page.

#Pros:

1. Simple and easy to use

#Cons:

1. Failed to OCR during my test.
2. Do not support the Batch process.
3. Do not support converting PDF to editable Word files.

#7 FreePDFOnline

FreePDFOnline also provides free online tools that you can use for PDF conversion and creation. You can also use it to OCR and create searchable PDF, well, not editable Word files. Anyway, let’s see the result.

Unlucky, the page hanged when uploading the PDF. It seems some js or ajax issues. When it shows the alert, I close and leave the website.

#Pros:

1. None

#Cons:

1. Failed to OCR during my test.
2. Do not support the Batch process.
3. Do not support converting PDF to editable Word files.

#8 DeftPDF

DeftPDF provides all kinds of PDF tools but now, I just want to try its OCR services and see if it is what I want. It has a good interface and attractive UI design. I drag my test PDF and hope it will have a good performance.

What? It says that the PDF file can not be uploaded and an Error shows up. It has a 50 MB maximum file size limit. But my test PDF file has only 1.49MB with two image pages included. That’s is strange and I decided to close and leave the page immediately.

#9 AvePDF

AvePDF is another PDF online tool and it allows users to upload 500MB PDF files. OK, let’s have it a test.

Everything is fine and I have downloaded the resulted PDF. Actually, the result is not bad and the whole process is fast. Most importantly, I get the searchable PDF successfully.

#Pros:

1. Fast and high accuracy

#Cons:

1. Do not support converting PDF to editable Word files.

Conclusions

I have spent hours to test the 9 online PDF OCR tool and finally, I found most PDF OCR tools do not include the most important feature I need, that is converting scanned PDF to editable PDF. Most of them do not support the batch process, and some of them are not reliable enough.

Let’s sum it up. If you just want to use the OCR services and extract all text from PDF while ignoring the format, you can choose any of them. However, if you want to OCR PDF and convert the scanned PDF to editable Word files, only PDF OCR and Free Online OCR have such a feature and highly recommended. If you want to just upload the PDF and do not wait on the page, you can try PDF OCR because it has email notification services, you can download the Word file in your email inbox.

Any ideas, let me know or I can have some tests further.