ScanRead

ScanRead is a free online OCR tool that extracts text from images, PDFs, screenshots, and handwritten notes. You drop a file or paste from your clipboard, and it returns copyable text in seconds. No signup is required for basic use, and it supports over 100 languages — from English and Arabic to Chinese and Japanese. The tool handles photos of documents, scanned PDFs, screenshots, and even cursive handwriting.

Under the hood, ScanRead uses two OCR models: PP-OCRv5 (a lightweight 2M-parameter model) and PaddleOCR-VL for more complex layouts like tables and mixed handwritten-printed content. The benchmarks on the site show strong performance on CJK (Chinese-Japanese-Korean) text, often beating Google Vision and AWS Textract on dense document recognition. The interface is minimal: a drag-and-drop zone, a few format badges (JPG, PNG, PDF, WebP), and an instant result. You can copy, download, or share a link to the extracted text.

ScanRead is most useful for students digitizing textbook pages, professionals pulling text from contracts or receipts, and anyone who needs to grab text from a screenshot without retyping. The free tier is generous — 20 pages per day with a free account — and there's a pricing page for heavier use. It's a straightforward, no-fuss tool that does one thing well.