Scan sensitive docs safely in your browser

100% browser-based Β· No server upload

Select Documents

Up to 10 / JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, PDF

Automatically selects the optimal balance of processing speed and recognition accuracy based on your document's characteristics

Files never leave your device

Why SafeOCR?

No Server Upload

Contracts and medical records processed safely

Pro Preprocessing

Enhance blurry scans for better accuracy

PDF & Excel Export

Searchable PDF, table-to-Excel conversion

How your data is processed

SafeOCR downloads and loads the open-source Tesseract.js OCR engine directly into your browser on first use, then performs all text recognition on the client side using your device's processor. Document images are never sent to external servers at any point β€” making it safe to process contracts, medical records, financial documents, government IDs, and any other sensitive files with complete confidence.

Supported formats & export

Input formats: JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, and WebP (up to 10 files, 20MB each). Output formats: Searchable PDF (with embedded text layer for Ctrl+F searching), Excel XLSX (with automatic table detection and cell mapping), plain text TXT file, and one-click clipboard copy. Recognizes 100+ languages including English, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, and all major European languages.

What is SafeOCR?

SafeOCR is a free, privacy-first OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tool that extracts editable, searchable text from images and documents entirely within your browser. Unlike cloud-based OCR services that require uploading your sensitive documents to remote servers β€” where they may be stored, accessed, or used for AI training β€” SafeOCR processes everything locally using the open-source Tesseract.js engine. Your contracts, medical records, tax documents, and financial statements never leave your device. Use it to digitize a paper receipt or invoice, pull text out of a screenshot, copy a paragraph from a photo of a book or whiteboard, or turn a scanned form into an editable file β€” then export the result as a searchable PDF, an Excel spreadsheet with automatic table detection, or plain text, or copy it straight to your clipboard. SafeOCR recognizes 100+ languages, runs on both desktop and mobile, and keeps working offline after the first load, with no account and no installation required.

How to Use SafeOCR (3 Steps)

  1. 1

    Upload Your Images

    Select up to 10 document images (JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, or WebP, up to 20MB each). Choose the primary document language from the dropdown and select a quality mode β€” Fast for clean printed text, Precise for complex layouts or lower-quality scans.

  2. 2

    Preview & Enhance

    SafeOCR automatically preprocesses your images β€” converting to grayscale, enhancing contrast, applying binarization, and correcting skew β€” to maximize recognition accuracy before the OCR engine runs. You can also manually adjust preprocessing settings for fine-tuned control.

  3. 3

    Extract & Export

    Review the extracted text with character-level confidence scores highlighted. Export results as a searchable PDF, Excel spreadsheet (with automatic table conversion), plain text file, or copy directly to clipboard. All export processing happens locally on your device.

Why Browser-Based OCR Is Safer

Most online OCR tools β€” Google Drive OCR, Adobe online services, and free sites β€” require you to upload sensitive documents to their servers, creating serious privacy risks. A scanned medical prescription, a tax return, or a signed contract uploaded to an unknown service could be stored indefinitely, accessed by employees, leaked in a data breach, or used to train AI models. SafeOCR loads the entire OCR engine directly into your browser, performing all text recognition on your device. Your documents stay on your device from start to finish. Because SafeOCR is open-source and runs entirely client-side, you can verify this yourself: open your browser's DevTools Network tab while scanning and you will see that no document is ever uploaded. And since the OCR engine and language data are cached after first use, the whole tool keeps working with your Wi-Fi switched off β€” the clearest possible proof that your files are not going anywhere.

Frequently Asked Questions

SafeOCR achieves 95%+ accuracy for clearly printed text on clean, high-contrast documents. Overall accuracy depends on image resolution (300+ DPI recommended), font clarity, and language complexity. The automatic preprocessing pipeline β€” grayscale, contrast enhancement, binarization, and deskew β€” significantly improves recognition on photos and lower-quality scans.
SafeOCR supports 100+ languages powered by the Tesseract.js language models, including English, Korean, Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Arabic, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and all major European languages.
Yes. When exporting to Excel (XLSX format), SafeOCR automatically detects table structures in your document and converts rows and columns into properly formatted spreadsheet cells β€” making it easy to work with invoices, data tables, and structured forms.
Each image can be up to 20MB in file size, and you can process up to 10 images simultaneously in a single session. Processing speed depends on your device's CPU performance β€” modern computers typically complete a full-page document in 5–15 seconds.
Yes. SafeOCR is completely free with no account required and no usage limits. All text recognition runs in your browser using the locally downloaded Tesseract.js engine, so your documents are never uploaded to any server.
Yes. The OCR engine and the language data you select are downloaded once on first use and then cached in your browser. After that, all text recognition runs entirely on your device with no network connection β€” you can scan documents on a plane or with Wi-Fi turned off. Nothing about your document is ever transmitted, which you can confirm by disconnecting from the internet and watching it still work.
SafeOCR is optimized for printed and typed text, where it reaches very high accuracy. Handwriting β€” especially cursive β€” is much harder for any OCR engine, so results will be inconsistent. For the best outcome, use clear, high-contrast images of printed documents at 300 DPI or higher. Neat block printing may work in a pinch, but free-form handwriting is not something SafeOCR is designed to handle reliably.

Related reading

The Privacy Risk of Online OCR Services