Is free OCR as accurate as Adobe Acrobat?

For standard printed text at 300 DPI or higher, yes — both typically land in the 98–99% range. Adobe tends to edge ahead on very poor scans, mixed-language documents, and complex page layouts with columns and tables. For everyday scanned contracts, receipts, and articles, a free Tesseract-based tool produces results that are indistinguishable in practice.

Does OCR change how the PDF looks?

No. A proper OCR pass preserves the original image exactly and adds an invisible text layer aligned behind it. The document looks identical — you just gain search, copy-paste, and accessibility.

Can OCR read handwriting?

Standard OCR engines like Tesseract are trained on printed text and perform poorly on handwriting — often below 60% accuracy. Handwriting recognition is a separate AI task that requires specialized models.

Is my document private when I use a browser-based OCR tool?

Yes, assuming the tool actually runs locally. UDT's PDF OCR processes everything client-side with WebAssembly — your file never leaves your browser and no copy is stored on any server.

How long does OCR take?

Roughly 2–6 seconds per page on a modern laptop, depending on scan resolution and page complexity. A 50-page document typically finishes in 2–5 minutes.

How to OCR a PDF for Free (2026)

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