OCRmyPDF
Command-line tool that adds a searchable OCR text layer to scanned PDFs.
Where your files are processed
No server involved
Command-line tool and Python library, usually run on your own machine or in your own container. No vendor service in the path. That is a property of the library itself: what an application built with it does with your file depends on that application, not on this.
A locally installed program or Docker image with no vendor service involved. Its own documentation describes keeping your private data private.
What it does
OCRmyPDF rasterises each page of an existing PDF, runs the Tesseract engine over the image, and writes the recognised text back as an invisible layer — so a scan becomes searchable and copyable while keeping its original resolution and metadata. It outputs PDF/A by default for archiving, can deskew, rotate and optimise images, and uses multiple CPU cores. It is a Python command-line program and importable library, available as native packages or a Docker image with a folder watcher for batch and watched-folder workflows.
Best for: Archivists and integrators who need repeatable, automatable OCR over large scan collections on their own hardware.
Worth knowing: Accuracy is bounded by Tesseract. Handwriting is not recognised, each language needs its own installed language pack, and multi-column layouts can be merged or garbled. Dependency licences depend on the components actually installed or distributed, so the core project licence is not the whole answer for a deployment.
Details, and where each comes from
Vendor statements, our own reading of their pages, and the things nobody has established yet, each answered separately. Where we have not confirmed something it says so rather than guessing, and a row nobody has established is greyed out.
- Versions covered
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Website
- ocrmypdf.readthedocs.io
- Requires an account
- Not applicable
- Watermark on the free tier
- Not verified
- Maximum file size
- Not verified
- Batch processing
- Yes
- Data residency
- Self-hosted
- Open source
- Yes
- Self-hostable
- Yes
- Licence
- MPL-2.0 for the OCRmyPDF project itself. Its dependencies carry their own licences, and which ones you are bound by depends on what you install or redistribute: the current documentation lists pypdfium2 as an alternative to Ghostscript, so Ghostscript is not strictly required, and older or platform-packaged builds may bundle it. Ghostscript is AGPL-3.0, which matters if you distribute it.
- Redaction
- No redaction feature
- Programmatic access
- Embeddable library · Command line
- Last availability check
- Responded in 95 ms 16 October 2026
Checked automatically by our own runner, not reported by the vendor. 100% of our last 30 checks got a response.
What the redaction verdict rests on
From the vendor's own documentation, read 22 September 2026. Not tested by us.
What that does not establish: The vendor’s own site was read on 22 September 2026 and contains no mention of redaction, sanitisation, blackout or whiteout. Absence from a vendor’s own material is not proof that a feature does not exist — it may be undocumented, or on a page the reading did not reach — but for a NEGATIVE claim it is the strongest evidence available, and it is weaker than a positive quote. Recorded as such rather than presented as certainty.
Sponsorship is distribution, not an endorsement or a promise of search rankings, AI citations, traffic, or sales. This listing is a free entry, compiled from published sources.
Related reading
- Which PDF tools keep your file on your machine — what we count as processing on your own device.
- Open source PDF tools, and what their licences require — what open source does and does not tell you.
Compared head to head
- OCRmyPDF vs Tesseract OCR The OCR engine, and the tool built on top of it.