Image to Text

Extract text from any image, free, no signup.

No languages match your search.

🖼️

Drag and drop, or paste a screenshot

Image, PDF, Word (DOCX) or text - drop, browse, paste, or use a URL

🔒 Your files are processed privately and deleted automatically.

OCR.chat turns any image into clean, editable text in seconds. Drag in a PNG, JPG, WEBP, GIF, BMP, or TIFF, paste a screenshot straight from your clipboard, and the recognized text appears next to the original so you can check it before you copy. The image to text converter reads more than 100 languages, including Latin, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Cyrillic, and Indic scripts, with no signup required to try it.

It is built for anyone who needs to pull text out of an image instead of retyping it: students copying a passage from a photographed page, developers grabbing an error message from a screenshot, and teams digitizing scanned forms and product labels. The fast engine handles printed text for free, while the premium AI engine takes on messy handwriting, dense tables, and complicated layouts when accuracy matters most.

What sets OCR.chat apart is honesty and control. Foreign words are transcribed exactly as written and never silently translated, low-confidence characters are flagged so you know what to double-check, and your file is processed for OCR and then deleted automatically. Export the result as plain text, Markdown, Word (DOCX), CSV, or JSON, or copy it to your clipboard with one click.

How to image to text

1
Add your image
Drag and drop a file, browse from your device, or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V or Cmd+V.
2
Pick the engine and language
Use the free fast engine for printed text, or switch to the premium AI engine for handwriting and tricky layouts; choose a language or let it auto-detect.
3
Review side by side
Compare the extracted text against your original image, with low-confidence characters flagged for a quick check.
4
Copy or download
Copy the text to your clipboard, or download it as TXT, Markdown, DOCX, CSV, or JSON.

Common uses

  • Students copying quotes and notes from photographed textbook pages instead of retyping them.
  • Developers and support agents lifting error messages and logs out of screenshots.
  • Office teams digitizing scanned forms, business cards, and product labels into editable text.
  • Researchers extracting text from photos of archival documents and field notes.
  • Accessibility users converting images of text into content a screen reader can read aloud.
  • Translators and language learners transcribing foreign-language signs and menus for later study.

Frequently asked questions

For clear printed text the fast engine is highly accurate across more than 100 languages. For photos, handwriting, or complex layouts, the premium AI engine improves accuracy further, and low-confidence characters are flagged so you can spot anything worth checking.

PNG, JPG, JPEG, WEBP, GIF, BMP, and TIFF. You can also paste a screenshot directly from your clipboard without saving a file first.

Over 100, including Latin-script languages, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Cyrillic, and Indic scripts. Foreign words are transcribed exactly as written and never automatically translated.

Clear handwriting is best handled by the premium AI engine, which is tuned for messy and cursive writing. The free fast engine is optimized for printed text.

Yes. You can extract text from images with no signup at all. A free account adds a monthly page bucket, and paid plans start at $5/month for more pages, the premium AI engine, batch processing, and API access.

Your file is processed for OCR and then deleted automatically. We never sell or share your images.

Yes. Send one POST request to /api/v1/ocr/ with your image file and an optional language or engine tier, and you get the extracted text back in your chosen format.

Results depend on how legible the text is, but the premium AI engine is far more forgiving of blur, glare, shadows, and low resolution than the fast engine. For the best outcome, fill the frame with the text, keep the page flat, and use even lighting before you upload.

Yes. The engines detect and correct skewed, tilted, and rotated text automatically, so a photo snapped at an angle or a sideways scan still comes out in the correct reading order.

Batch processing is available on paid plans, so you can queue many images in one go instead of uploading them one at a time. On the free tier you convert one image per upload.

Yes. OCR.chat runs in your mobile browser, so you can snap a photo or pick one from your camera roll and get the text back without installing an app.

Plain text (TXT), Markdown, Word (DOCX), searchable PDF, CSV, and JSON. You can also copy the result straight to your clipboard with one click.

Use this via the API

Run this tool programmatically with a single POST. Authenticate with the API token from your account page.

curl -X POST https://ocr.chat/api/v1/ocr/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -F "file=@your-file.png" \
  -F "tool=image-to-text"

Files of 5 pages or fewer return the result inline; otherwise poll the job, then download it as txt:

curl -L "https://ocr.chat/api/v1/ocr/JOB_UUID/download/?format=txt" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN" -o result.txt
Read the API docs →

More OCR tools

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