OCR is now widely applied to turn scans and images into computer-readable text, so you can make further use of these texts by copy & paste, search or edit. However, an OCR tool is never cheap, is there any free OCR software that can work offline on Mac, Windows, Android or iPhone?

• Mac Ocr Software Reviews
• Free Ocr Software For Mac Os X
• Free Ocr Software For Macbook Pro
• Free Ocr Reader For Mac

The answer is YES. Today, we are going to introduce 10 best free OCR software for 2021, all of them are 100% free and offline. I mean, those online, free OCR service or offline tools only offering free trial are not on my list.

Best OCR Software for 2021

• OCR PDF to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, ePub, RTF, etc.
• Accurate OCR results to highly preserve original file quality
• Batch OCR files
• OCR specific pages and preview files
• Adjust output settings
• Fast OCR speed

Free OCR scan performed with different software can easily determine their relative efficiency and speed and save time, effort, and money for the enterprise by choosing the best. 23+ Best Omnichannel Commerce Software for Windows, Mac, Android 2021. PDF OCR X Community Edition is a free OCR Software for Mac System. This application is created by the Web Line Solutions Corporation to help Mac clients. You can change over checked report and picture records to content archives and accessible PDF positions. ExactScan is one of the best scanning software for Mac that has the capacity to scan about 200 documents and is compatible with other scanners. Besides, this software, launched by ExactCode, is free and easy to function. Features to look for: ExactScan allows you to store and scan over 200 documents.

For WindowsFor macOS

How We Pick The Best Free OCR Software?

There are so many online and offline free OCR tools, it is not easy to pick the best ones. But most of us have uniform requirements on a OCR job, just as following:

• 100% Offline---online, free OCR tools take time to upload and process OCR on files, offline free OCR software offers faster and easier conversion, which greatly save your time;
• 100% Free---Lots of OCR software developers claim their products are free, but only a free trial is provided with limited features, like limits on pages, file size, output format, etc. Here we talk about 100% real free offline ocr software only, they are full-featured.
• Good OCR Results---There is no perfect OCR result, even from Adobe OCR. But 90% accuracy is acceptable, and it is OK to manually adjust the formatting if a free OCR tool can export as Text only.
• Safe to Use---The software must be clean and safe to use, there won’t be malware included in the installation to do harm to our devices.

10 Best Free OCR Software for 2021

#1 Capture2Text

OS Platform: Windows

Our Rating: 4.0/5.0

Free Download Capture2Text Software:https://sourceforge.net/projects/capture2text/

Capture2Text is a powerful OCR program to recognize texts from screen captures. Though only allows users to turn captures to plain text, it offers extended features, like text replacement, translation, text to speech conversion. In addition, it allows users to configure different settings to customize the OCR according to needs. However, it seems Capture needs further work to fix the bugs regarding translation and OCR.

What We Like

1. Support OCR 98 languages
2. Save recognized text to clipboard, or show in popup window, or keep line breaks
3. Perform text replacements
4. Translate to other languages
5. Convert text to speech

What We Don’t Like

1. Export as Text only, no formatting
2. No batch OCR support
3. Program crashes sometimes

#2 PDF OCR X Community Edition

OS Platform: Windows and macOS

Our Rating: 4.0/5.0

Free Download PDF OCR X Community Software: https://solutions.weblite.ca/pdfocrx/download

Mac Ocr Software Reviews

PDF OCR X Community is an extremely simple program to perform OCR on both PDF and various images. You just need to drag and drop the file, then choose output format and file language to start the OCR progress. It supports exporting files as Text or searchable PDF, but can convert single-page PDF only. To convert multiple-page PDF, you need to update to its Enterprise version or split the PDF to several single-page PDF for free OCR. Same as FreeOCR, it hasn’t been updated for years. You may have crash issues on latest operating systems.

What We Like

1. OCR PDF and images
2. Export as Text and searchable PDF
3. Easy to use, just drag and drop
4. Recognize 60 languages

What We Don’t Like

1. No batch OCR support
2. Convert single-page PDF only
3. Process OCR slowly

#3 SimpleOCR

OS Platform: Windows

Our Rating: 4.0/5.0

Free Download SimpleOCR Software: https://www.simpleocr.com/download/

SimpleOCR from SimpleSoftware, is a freeware to do OCR on PDF, image, even paper files from a connected scanner. SimpleSoftware offers various brands of OCR tools, its SimpleOCR gives users a free experience to know how efficient and convenient an OCR tool can be. If your file is reversed, you can rotate to have a more accurate OCR. Also, it supports spell check, you can replace those suspected errors with words from the dictionary. Yet, it may take you some time to manually adjust the errors.

What We Like

1. OCR files in batch
2. OCR files from scanner, PDF and image
3. Spell check is allowed
4. Save file as Word or TXT
5. Allow rotating files

What We Don’t Like

1. Take time to finish an OCR job
2. Crash frequently

#4 FreeOCR

OS Platform: Windows

Our Rating: 3.8/5.0

Free Download FreeOCR Software: http://www.paperfile.net/download2.html

FreeOCR from PaperFile is based on Tesseract OCR to turn scans, PDF and image to 3 formats: Text, Word and RTF. It offers batch OCR and allows users to export files as JPG. Though it is designed to convert files to editable Word, the formatting cannot keep in the Word file. In addition, the last update for this program was released in 2015, there may be some technical errors on different, especially latest Windows. Anyway, it offers high accuracy and deserves a try.

What We Like

1. Support OCR on scans, PDF and image
2. Export files as Text, Word and RTF
3. Recognize 11 languages
4. Export file as JPG

What We Don’t Like

1. Time consuming to process OCR
2. No formatting is preserved even when exported as Word format
3. No batch OCR support
4. Outdated interface
5. Respond slow when importing files

#5 Free OCR to Word

OS Platform: Windows and macOS

Our Rating: 3.8/5.0

Free Download Free OCR to Word Software: https://www.ocrtoword.com/

Free OCR to Word offers an easy way to turn files from scanner and images to editable Word or Text format. Other than other free OCR tools, it has an excellent support on image input, besides common image, it also does OCR on ICO, PCX, PSD, CUR, DCM, WMF, EMF, TGA, PXM, WBMP, CRW, WPD, IEV, JP2, J2K, DCX and LYR All. In addition, it offers a set of image and document tools, to view and manage the file easily, which gives a better user experience.

What We Like

1. OCR scans and image
2. Offer a set of image tools for better view
3. Offer a set of document tools to copy, paste, remove and output text
4. Export as Word and Text
5. Fast OCR

What We Don’t Like

1. Cannot highly maintain the original formatting
2. Need manually adjust the OCR errors

Free Try The Best OCR Software

• OCR PDF to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, ePub, RTF, etc.
• Accurate OCR results to highly preserve original file quality
• Batch OCR files
• OCR specific pages and preview files
• Adjust output settings
• Fast OCR speed

For WindowsFor macOS

#6 SuperGeek Free OCR

OS Platform: Windows

Our Rating: 3.8/5.0

Free Download SuperGeek Free OCR Software: https://www.ocrfree.net/download.php

Does this program look familiar to you? Let’s say Free OCR to Word. Yes, I finally figure out that SuperGeek Free OCR and Free OCR to Word are exactly the same program, having the same functions but using a different color of interface and available on different website. I have been hesitate if I should put this SuperGeek program on this list, anyway, it is an option to do OCR for free and offline, for users who have problems accessing to Free OCR to Word, this program may help.

What We Like

1. OCR scans and image
2. Offer a set of image and document tools for better user experience
3. Export as Word and Text
4. Fast OCR

What We Don’t Like

1. Cannot highly maintain the original format and layout
2. Need manually adjust the OCR errors

#7 OneNote

OS Platform: macOS, Windows, iOS, Android

Our Rating:3.8 /5.0

Free Download OneNote OCR Software: https://products.office.com/en/onenote/digital-note-taking-app

OneNote from Microsoft is a note-taking program to create and organize notes across different platforms, including macOS, Windows, Android and iOS, also it offers online, free portal to manage your notes anytime anywhere. It is free and mainly focusing on processing notes, to process notes source from PDF or images, it builds in OCR feature to copy text from these files, then embed to a note for other use.

What We Like

1. Highly compatible on different operating system
2. High OCR accuracy to recognize text
3. Support OCR on PDF and image
4. Easy to use

What We Don’t Like

1. Doesn’t support batch OCR
2. Export as Text only
3. No formatting is preserved
4. Program crash sometimes

#8 Adobe Scan Mobile App

OS Platform: Android and iOS

Our Rating: 3.6/5.0

Free Download Adobe Scan OCR Software: https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/mobile/scanner-app.html

Speaking of PDF editing or OCR files, Adobe is definitely the most professional solution. But its price tag is always the obstacle to install this program. So, it’s really a good news that its mobile version is free to users. Adobe Scan mobile app is available on both Android and iOS, helping turn scans under their mobile phone camera to copyable text. To yield high quality Adobe OCR result, it provides basic editing feature to optimize the photo scans.

What We Like

1. Accurate OCR result
2. Automatically detect and capture scans
3. Turn scans to PDF
4. Auto recognize text
5. Edit photo scans
6. Connect with other apps to edit, convert, fill and sign PDFs

What We Don’t Like

1. In-app purchase is required when export as Word or for advanced options
2. No batch OCR

#9 LEADTOOLS OCR Application

OS Platform: macOS

Our Rating: 3.5/5.0

Free Download LEADTOOLS OCR Software: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/leadtools-ocr/id604393629?mt=12

LEADTOOLS is a company offering fast OCR SDK technology for developers across all platforms, rather than providing end-user applications, but its LEADTOOLS OCR Application in Mac AppStore gives a chance for users to try its OCR technology. It supports OCR PDF and image to 10 formats, but according to my tests, it does the best on OCR files to text, while there are improvements needs to be done on OCR accuracy. Anyway, it is quite convenient to extract texts from files in the result window, instead of saving in a txt file.

What We Like

1. Offer a basic setting of viewing tools
2. OCR PDF and image
3. Export files as Word, TXT, LTD, PDF, RTF, SVG, XML, HTM, MOB and ePub
4. Select OCR zone
5. Extract text directly from result window

What We Don’t Like

1. Program crashes sometimes
2. Need improvements on OCR accuracy
3. No batch OCR support
4. Support only 5 languages

#10 Google Keep

OS Platform: Android, iOS, Web and Chrome

Our Rating: 3.5/5.0

Free Download Google Keep OCR Software: https://www.google.com/keep/

OneNote alike, Google Keep is an application to take and manage notes online or on your mobile phone. Its built-in OCR feature can grab text directly from the image, then share to your Google contacts, or copy to Google Docs for further editing. It is not a piece of software exclusively designed to do OCR, you will benefit a lot when using it to create and manage your notes.

What We Like

1. Accurate OCR
2. Allow taking notes
3. Grab text directly from image
4. Share to other contacts
5. Copy text to Google Docs

What We Don’t Like

1. Export as plain text only, no formatting
2. No batch OCR

Best Free OCR Software Comparison

Platform	Rating	Input Format	Output Format
SimpleOCR	Windows	4.0/5.0	Scan, PDF, Image	Word, Text
Capture2Text	Windows	4.0/5.0	Image	Text, Speech
PDF OCR X Community Edition	Windows and macOS	4.0/5.0	PDF, Image	Text, PDF
FreeOCR	Windows	3.8/5.0	Scan, PDF, Image	Word, Text, RTF;
Free OCR to Word	Windows	3.8/5.0	Scan, Image	Word, Text
SuperGeek Free OCR	Windows	3.8/5.0	Scan, Image	Word, Text
OneNote	macOS, Windows, iOS, Android	3.8/5.0	PDF, Image	Text
Adobe Scan Mobile App	Android and iOS	3.6/5.0	Scan, Image	PDF, Text
LEADTOOLS OCR Application	macOS	3.5/5.0	PDF, Image	Word, TXT, LTD, PDF, RTF, SVG, XML, HTM, MOB and ePub
Google Keep	Android, iOS, Web and Chrome	3.5/5.0	Image	Text

Conclusion

As I believe, all the best free OCR software that worth a try is now on our top list, they are 100% free and safe to use offline. One thing for sure, all these free OCR software has their individual disadvantages, and that’s the reason why there are still a lot of users finally pick a paid OCR software: Cisdem PDF Converter OCR or OCR Converter for Windows to recognize their file, they want better user experience and more accurate OCR result.

Sometimes, we need to extract the content from the scanned PDF files to text, and that's when PDF to text OCR functionality comes in very handy. OCR acronym for Optical Character Recognition. Many PDF programs come with the OCR feature, which makes scanned PDF documents searchable and editable.

If it's your very first time looking for the best free PDF OCR solution out there, we can understand how challenging it can be. But no worries!! This post will introduce the top free PDF OCR tools and how to OCR a PDF on Windows and Mac.

Best Free PDF OCR Software for Windows and Mac

There is abundant third-party software on Windows and Mac. Come and find the best tool for you to OCR a PDF.

EaseUS PDF Editor

EaseUS PDF Editor is an excellent PDF OCR software. This program can recognize and convert image-based PDF to an editable format and accurately detect and convert as many as 29 languages, such as English, French, German, Japanese, etc.

What's more, this Windows PDF editor enables you to edit and manage your PDF files like below:

• Insert, delete, reorder, extract, crop, or rotate PDF pages with ease
• Add comment, lines, or highlight PDF documents
• Add or remove password from PDF
• Sign your PDF effortlessly

Want to explore more information? Just click the below button to get it. And there is a tutorial that guides you to OCR a PDF using this tool, and you can follow it to use the OCR feature easily.

Step 1. Click Create and choose From file from the top left corner

If you want to OCR from an existing PDF file, click from the File option on the top left corner to start the process.

Step 2. Click OCR on the toolbar

After clicking OCR on the menu, select the language, then wait for a couple of seconds.

Step 3. Edit your PDF as you wish

You can use crop, rotate, combine, etc. features according to your needs. There are several features, and it allows you to manage this process easily and effortlessly.

Step 4. Click Save to keep the changes

When you are finished with editing, click save to keep the changes. You can also click save as and type a new file name if you want to keep the old version unchanged.

Adobe Acrobat DC

With its OCR functionality, you can easily convert your scanned PDFs or images into editable and searchable documents. It can perform OCR on PDFs that contain vector art, images, hidden text, or a blend of these elements.

Above all, the OCR tool in Adobe Acrobat DC offers many editing features, including text recognition, combining files, adding comments, and more.

Pros:

• Support cutting and pasting the text into other apps
• Work with many languages
• Accurately match fonts
• A free trial is available

Cons:

• Lots of features can overwhelm beginners

URL: https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat/how-to/ocr-software-convert-pdf-to-text.html

PDF OCR X

You can also count on PDF OCR X to help you convert scanned PDF documents into searchable PDFs or text documents with ease. It comes with advanced OCR functionality to extract the text from PDFs, even if it is in an image.

Above all, this PDF OCR-free solution is exclusively designed to handle PDFs created using a scan-to-PDF tool.

Pros:

• Drag and drop functionality to upload documents
• Able to convert PDFs to both text or searchable PDFs
• Support JPEG, PNG, BMP, and more image formats
• Support more than 60 languages

Cons:

• Lack editing features

URL: https://solutions.weblite.ca/pdfocrx/index.php

Readiris

When looking for a PDF to Word OCR solution, Readris serves the purpose best. Supporting both Windows and Mac, the tool can convert PDFs, texts, and images in a scanned document to modify in the format of your preference, including Word.

Its new added features such as a new recognition engine, new user interface, and faster document management make it even more remarkable as a PDF OCR solution or even more.

Pros:

• Various editing features are available
• User-friendly interface
• Open files faster

Cons:

• Lack a forever-free version

URL: https://www.irislink.com/zh-Hans-chn/c1810/IRIS---The-World-leader-in-OCR--PDF-and-Portable-scanner.aspx?

Free Ocr Software For Mac Os X

PDFMate PDF Converter

PDFMate PDF Converter entails advanced OCR technology that can help you convert PDFs to editable documents without any hassle. You can extract images and text from image-based PDFs and convert them into selectable and editable text or work files.

Besides the OCR functionality, the software has so much to offer, such as merging and creating PDF, encrypted converted files, customizing layout, and more.

Pros:

Free Ocr Software For Macbook Pro

• Convert scanned documents to editable ones with OCR
• Support converting PDF to TXT, DOC, and other formats
• Add permission password to documents
• Simple and easy to use

Cons:

• Some crash problems during conversion processes

URL: https://www.pdfmate.com/pdf-converter-free.html

Best 3 Free PDF OCR Online Tools

For those who aren't willing to download software on the computer, the online OCR tools in this section may be the best choices.

OnlineOCR.net

Suppose you don't want to install any program on your system for PDF to word OCR, no worries. With OnlineOCR.net, you can get the job done without installing any tool on your computer. It can recognize characters and text from scanned PDF and convert them into the editable doc format.

It is a completely free PDF OCR online service that even comes with a guest mode, which implies there is no need to register to use it.

Pros:

• Support converting scanned PDFs to editable DOC format
• Work even without registration
• Convert PDF to Word, text, or excel format
• Support many languages

Cons:

• Support file size maximum up to 15 MB

URL: https://www.onlineocr.net/

ABBYY FineReader Online

ABBYY FineReader Online is another online OCR tool designed to help scan and convert PDF documents into Word and many other editable formats. It even supports import and export documents to cloud storage services such as OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox.

The tool will keep converted files in the cloud for around 14 days, giving you enough time to download and share your files during the period.

Pros:

• Support many input and output file formats
• Export a converted document to popular cloud storage services
• Easy to use
• Able to convert scanned PDF to text OCR

Cons:

• Require registration

URL: https://finereaderonline.com/en-us/Tasks/Create

PDF2Go

PDF2Go is also an amazing PDF OCR online tool you can use to convert scanned files to text so that you can edit with ease. You can drag and drop your file or upload it from cloud storage. With PDF2Go, you don't have to copy the text manually, as this PDF OCR free tool will handle this job for you.

Above all, it works with all web browsers out there.

Free Ocr Reader For Mac

Pros:

• Convert scanned documents to word with OCR
• Support both DOC & DOCX and text format
• Work on a smartphone as well
• No registration is required

Cons:

• Lack support for uploading a file from the OneDrive service

URL: https://www.pdf2go.com/pdf-to-word

How to OCR a PDF?

As mentioned above, we'll help you learn how to OCR a PDF on Windows and Mac, and it's time. We will use Adobe Acrobat DC to walk you through how to OCR a scanned PDF to have an editable copy of your document.

Step 1. In Adobe Acrobat for PC or Mac, open your scanned PDF file.

Step 2. Tap 'Edit PDF' in the right place. The Adobe Acrobat will automatically perform OCR to your file and make it editable.

Step 3. Tap the text element you would like to edit and begin typing.

Step 4. Finally, select 'File' > 'Save As' and enter a new name for your editable file.

Conclusion

That's all on PDF OCR free tools. We have covered tools that really help to OCR a PDF to word or text on Windows and Mac with ease.

It's time for you to make a selection. Our advice is to pick EaseUS PDF Editor to get the job done.

Free PDF OCR Solutions FAQs

If you still have problems with the PDF OCR feature, those FAQs may help you.

1. How to OCR my PDF to word?

For PDF to word OCR, all you need to do is upload your scanned PDF document and choose the output file format as Word/DOC/DOCX while using any PDF OCR tool.

2. How to OCR my PDF to editable text?

Like PDF to word OCR, you need to select an output file format as .txt while using any PDF OCR tool to PDF to text OCR.

3. How to OCR my PDF to Excel?

The best way to OCR your PDF to excel is to use an online OCR service like ABBYY FineReader Online. It will provide you with an option to choose '.xlsx' as your output format.