About OCR.chat

OCR.chat turns any image or PDF into clean, editable text, tables, and math, in over 100 languages.

OCR still isn't solved. Most tools mangle tables, drop figures, choke on handwriting, or silently translate foreign words. We built OCR.chat to fix that: a fast engine for everyday documents, and a premium AI engine for the hard ones, with the recognized text shown next to your original so you can trust what you copy.

No signup to try, honest free limits, every export format on one screen, and a simple API for developers.

Built on the best open source

We don't hide what powers OCR.chat. We pick the strongest open-source OCR models, run them on our own servers, and build the layers that make them useful: language routing, side-by-side review, every export format, and chat with your document.

  • PaddleOCR (PP-OCRv6) Apache-2.0
    The engine behind our free Fast tier. Excellent on printed documents in 100+ languages, with per-language models for Latin, CJK, Arabic, Cyrillic and Indic scripts.
  • PaddleOCR-VL & DeepSeek-OCR open source
    Open vision-language models behind Premium AI, for handwriting, math and complex layouts. We self-host them on our own GPU, so your documents stay on our infrastructure.
  • PyMuPDF open source
    Reads the text layer of digital PDFs instantly and losslessly, so clean PDFs never need OCR at all, and renders scanned pages for the OCR engines.
  • python-docx & openpyxl open source
    Read Word documents directly (no OCR needed) and write real Excel spreadsheets for the table-extraction tools.

Standing on open source means you get state-of-the-art accuracy that keeps improving with the community, not a black box. Thank you to everyone who builds these projects.

Frequently asked questions

Yes. You can OCR documents with no signup at all. Create a free account for more pages per month, or upgrade for unlimited pages, the premium AI engine, and API access.

PNG, JPG, WEBP, GIF, BMP, TIFF, and multi-page PDF. We recognize text in over 100 languages, including Latin, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Cyrillic, and Indic scripts.

Yes. Tables come out as real Markdown or CSV, not misaligned text, and equations convert to LaTeX you can paste straight into your document.

Plain text, Markdown, Word (DOCX), searchable PDF, CSV, and JSON, all from the result screen, plus one-click copy to clipboard.

Your files are processed for OCR only and deleted automatically. We never sell or share your documents.

Yes. Our premium AI engine handles handwritten notes, forms, and mixed printed & handwritten pages far better than classic OCR. Clear handwriting works best, and you can always check the result against your original before copying.

Yes. Multi-page PDFs are handled page by page, with pages that already contain a text layer read instantly and only scanned pages sent through OCR. Larger documents process in the background while you wait on the result screen.

There is a genuinely free tier you can use without signing up. Paid plans start at $5/month and add more pages, the premium AI engine, and API access. Usage is metered in credits, where one credit equals one page.

Most tools mangle tables, drop figures, or choke on handwriting and math. OCR.chat pairs a fast engine for everyday documents with a premium AI engine for the hard ones, keeps tables and equations structured, shows the text next to your original, and offers every export format on one screen.

Yes. The result screen shows the recognized text side by side with your original document, so you can verify it, fix anything by hand, and copy or export only once you are happy with it.

No. OCR.chat runs entirely in your browser, just upload an image or PDF and get your text back. There is nothing to download or install.

Yes. A simple REST API at /api/v1/ocr/ lets you submit a file and get back text, Markdown, tables, and JSON with a per-page breakdown. You can choose the fast or premium AI engine per request.

Yes. Beyond reading text, the premium AI engine can describe what an image shows in plain language and write concise alt text for accessibility and SEO. Switch on Describe image on the homepage, or use the Describe Image and Alt Text Generator tools.
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