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Best free OCR tools to read text from scans and screenshots

Copy text out of images, scanned PDFs and screenshots, offline.

  1. Copy text from screenshots, images and PDFs, offline
    ★ 48.4kstars
    Umi-OCR by hiroi-sora · Free alternative to ABBYY FineReader, Google Lens
    Desktop app: screenshot to text in a click
    No codingDesktop appFair
  2. Edit, merge, split, convert and read text from PDFs privately
    ★ 95.7kstars
    Stirling-PDF by Stirling-Tools · Free alternative to Adobe Acrobat, Smallpdf
    Makes scanned PDFs searchable, plus 50 PDF tools
    Some setupSelf-hosted app▶ Try onlineHealthy
  3. Read text from images and turn PDFs into structured data
    ★ 92.2kstars
    PaddleOCR by PaddlePaddle · Free alternative to Adobe Acrobat OCR, ABBYY FineReader
    Very accurate, 100+ languages, online demo
    For developersCode library▶ Try onlineHealthy
  4. Turn PDFs and scans into clean text, even tricky layouts
    ★ 19.8kstars
    olmocr by allenai · Free alternative to Mistral OCR
    Handles tricky layouts, free web demo
    Some setupCommand-line tool▶ Try onlineFair
  5. Make scanned PDFs searchable
    ★ 35.2kstars
    OCRmyPDF by ocrmypdf · Free alternative to Adobe Acrobat OCR
    Adds a text layer to scanned PDFs
    Some setupCommand-line toolHealthy

Ranked for people new to AI: ease of use first, then quality, upkeep and popularity. Last checked 4 Nov 2026.

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