Extract text from any image — free OCR
Need to copy text out of a picture? This free image to text tool uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to read the words inside a photo, screenshot, scanned page or sign and turn them into real, editable text. Instead of retyping by hand, you upload the image, pick the language, and get text you can copy, edit, search and paste anywhere.
It runs entirely in your browser — your image is never sent to a server — so it's private and free with no signup. It works with English plus many other languages including Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, Spanish, French and German, making it useful for students, office work, translation and saving notes from photos.
How to use it
- Upload or drop in your image (photo, screenshot or scan).
- Choose the language that matches the text.
- Click Extract text and wait for the progress bar.
- Copy the result or download it as a .txt file.
What you can use it for
OCR is handy in everyday life: copy text from a screenshot you can't select, digitise a printed page or receipt, grab a phone number or address from a photo, pull a quote out of an image, extract questions from a scanned worksheet, or capture text from a slide or whiteboard. Anywhere text is "trapped" inside a picture, this tool sets it free.
How to get the best accuracy
OCR quality depends heavily on the image. For the best results, use a sharp, well-lit photo where the text is straight and reasonably large, avoid blur and glare, and crop to just the text area when you can. Most importantly, select the correct language — using English on an Urdu image, for example, will give poor results. Clean printed text reads almost perfectly; faint, skewed or low-resolution text is harder.
Reading Urdu, Arabic and other scripts
This tool isn't limited to English. It can recognise right-to-left scripts like Urdu and Arabic, the Devanagari script used for Hindi, and Latin-based languages such as Spanish, French and German. The key is choosing the matching language before you scan — recognition models are language-specific, so a Hindi image scanned as English will return gibberish. If a page mixes English with another language, try the combined "English + Urdu" option. As with any language, clean, high-contrast printed text gives the most reliable result.
Is my image private?
Yes. Unlike many online OCR sites that upload your file, this tool downloads the recognition engine to your browser and processes everything locally on your device. Your image and the extracted text never leave your computer or phone, nothing is stored, and there are no accounts — safe for personal documents, IDs and private notes.
Free with no limits
There's no signup, no watermark and no cap on how many images you scan. The first scan in a given language downloads that language's data once, then caches it so future scans are quicker. Use it on any modern browser, on phone or desktop.