When converting scanned invoices, reports or images into editable formats, OCR is required. If you are looking for the best free OCR solutions for mac like many others, we collect a list for you: a list of 12 powerful mac free ocr software or online, free OCR services to perform satisfactory OCR on digitized files for 2021.

Full List of Mac Free OCR

NAPS2 helps you scan, edit, and save to PDF, TIFF, JPEG, or PNG using a simple and functional interface. NAPS2 is completely free and open source. Doxillion Document and PDF Converter Free Mac v.2.68 Doxillion Free Document and PDF Converter Software for Mac is a multi-format converter and the fastest way to convert DOC, DOCX, PDF, WPS, Word, and many other file types. With this free software, convert text documents within minutes. Download HP Easy Scan for macOS 10.10 or later and enjoy it on your Mac. ‎HP Easy Scan is designed specifically for use with your HP scanner or multifunction printer. With features such as automatic photo detection, multi-page document processing, text recognition (OCR)1, and PDF file output, HP Easy Scan will help you get the most value.

Free Try on The Best Mac OCR Program

• Perform OCR on scanned documents and images
• OCR files and export as 10 editable formats
• Advanced OCR settings to improve OCR accuracy
• Batch OCR
• Recognize 27~200 languages
• High quality OCR results

6 Best Free OCR Software for Mac in 2021

There are 2 types of free OCR solutions for Mac users, either online or offline. In this part, we list 6 top free OCR software for MacOS basing on text recognition accuracy and overall features.

1. PDF OCR X Community

PDF OCR X Community is a simple drag-and-drop utility that converts single-page PDFs and images into text documents or searchable PDF files, it supports for more than 60 languages. For multi-page PDFs and batch conversion features, you need to pay its enterprise version.

Download Address: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pdf-ocr-x-community-edition/id571442933?mt=12

Advantages:

1. Extremely easy to use;
2. Support both PDF and image;
3. Recognize 60 languages;

Disadvantages:

1. Free edition only OCR single-page PDF;
2. Formatting is messed up when working on complicate files;
3. Relatively slow OCR process;

2. Evernote

Evernote is a popular note-syncing service, enables users to collect, nuture and share ideas across desktop and mobile platforms. One of its easily overlooked features is automatic OCR service. Users will be allowed to add images into Evernote server for automatic OCR, you may have to wait, but 10 minutes will be quite enough to finish the OCR.

Download Address: https://evernote.com/download

Advantages:

1. Available for all platforms (MacOS, Windows, iOS, Android);
2. Support both PDF and image;
3. Recognize 28 languages;

Disadvantages:

1. Limited OCR feature when dealing with PDF (file size, pages, resolution, etc.);
2. Relatively slow OCR processing;

Evernote OCR review, how-to guide and troubleshooting

Evernote is one of the best and most popular cross-platform note-taking apps. In this article, you will find how to use Evernote OCR and what to do if Evernote OCR is not working.

3. OneNote OCR

Microsoft OneNote is a program to take and manage notes anytime and anywhere. It greatly facilitates the collaborations between team members. Not only limited to manually input texts to create notes, Microsoft OneNote also embeds the OCR feature, OneNote OCR allowing users to recognize texts from images, so the image texts can be copied and paste as editable or searchable note.

Download Address: https://www.onenote.com/download

Advantages:

1. Available for all platforms;
2. Support both PDF and image;

Disadvantages:

1. Can only copy text from PDF or image, no formatting is retained;
2. OCR fails or crashes sometimes;

How to Do OneNote OCR on Image or PDF(Mac, Windows, iPad)

An impressive feature of OneNote is its built-in capability to do OneNote OCR. Here we are going to introduce OneNote OCR, demonstrate how to OCR image or PDF with OneNote.

4. OCR App by LEADTOOLS

OCR App by LEADTOOLS is a MacOS application designed to recognize and extract texts from images. Also it offers a set of tools to improve the OCR accuracy, such as tweak OCR Engine Settings, flip, reverse, adjust binarization or brightness of the image. It can also perform OCR on scanned PDFs, but only export files as text. If you want o convert uploaded files to other format with LEADTOOLS, you will need to copy and paste to the text processor accordingly.

Download Address: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/leadtools-ocr/id604393629?mt=12

Advantages:

1. Easy to use;
2. Advanced settings to improve OCR accuracy;
3. Support both image and PDF;
4. Fast OCR;

Disadvantages:

1. Recognize only 5 languages;
2. No formatting is retained, only text;

5. Easy Screen OCR for Mac

It is a light and simple Mac free OCR software to recognize texts from images. All you need to do is, capturing the screenshots of your file first, then performing OCR on the file to make the image text copyable. Also, it allows users to save the screenshot as PNG or PDF format. However, this free OCR software for mac only allows users to OCR 20 images for free.

Download Address: https://easyscreenocr.com/

Advantages:

1. Easy to use;
2. Small in size;
3. Support to take screenshots from any files;

Disadvantages:

1. Only 20 images can be processed with OCR;
2. No formatting is retained;
3. Unstable OCR accuracy;

6. DigitEyeOCR

Though DigitEyeOCR has discontinued to update for many years, for users who are using MacOS 10.10 and earlier, it is still worth a try. It is a free OCR software for mac to recognize texts from BMP and GIF images. If you want to do OCR on other image formats, you will need to convert the file to DigitEye OCR supported formats.

Download Address: https://digiteyeocr.en.softonic.com/mac

Disadvantages:

1. Only support BMP and GIF;
2. Unstable OCR accuracy;
3. Relatively slow OCR process;
4. No update for years;

6 Best online, free Services for Mac

Also, there are quite a lot of online, free OCR services for mac users, but not all of them can actually perform OCR or bring satisfactory OCR results. And here we pick 6 best free OCR tools online according to our OCR testing.

7. Google Docs

Google Docs is a service offered by Google to manage web-based documents, like creating, editing Word, Spreadsheets, presentations, even store them online for easy access on different devices. Users can perform Google OCR on images, scanned PDFs, it is fast with basically satisfactory results.

Advantages:

1. Support images and PDF;
2. Excellent support on output format (searchable PDF, Word, ODT, RTF, TXT, HTML, ePub);
3. Edit files after OCR processing within Google Docs;

Disadvantages:

1. Require several steps to finish the OCR;
2. Unstable OCR accuracy;
3. Take time to process OCR;

8. Online OCR

Online OCR is an online OCR service that can recognize the texts and characters from scanned files and images. It requires no software installation, what you need to do is upload the file (not exceeding size of 5MB) as guided, choose the language and output format(Word, Excel or Text), then 'Convert' to start the OCR process. Once finish, a download link will be offered to download the converted file.

Free Document Scanning Software For Mac Os

Advantages:

1. Support both image and PDF;
2. Easy to use;
3. Export files as Word, Excel and Text;
4. Recognize 46 languages;

Disadvantages:

1. Unstable OCR accuracy;
2. Need to manually adjust formatting in the output file;
3. Max file size limit 15 MB;

9. Online2PDF

Online2PDF is another online platform to manage PDF files, such as editing, compressing ,unlocking ,converting, merging, protecting and so on. Comparing with other online, free OCR tools, Online2pdf offers extended features to customize the output and support more output formats.

Advantages:

1. Batch OCR;
2. Support both image and PDF;
3. Excellent support for output format;
4. Allow customizing output files;

Disadvantages:

1. File quantity and size limit;
2. Recognize only 6 languages;
3. Unstable OCR accuracy;

10. ConvertioOCR

Convertio is an online, free tool to OCR image and scanned documents, then save them as various editable formats. You can upload files from local or via url, even icloud storage accounts. It allows users to perform OCR on a multiple-language file.

Advantages:

1. Upload files from local, URl or icloud storage services;
2. Recognize multiple-language file;
3. Excellent support for output formats (11 formats);
4. Convert all or specific pages;
5. Save converted files to Dropbox or Google Drive;

Disadvantages:

1. Unstable OCR accuracy;
2. Relatively slow OCR processs;
3. Need to manually adjust the formatting;
4. Only 10 pages can be done with OCR for free;

11. New OCR

New OCR can convert JPG, PNG, GIF, MBP, TIFF, PDF and DJVU files into Doc, TXT or PDF format. To improve the OCR accuracy, New OCR allows users to rotate images and analyze page layout before the OCR processing. If you want to export the files as other formats, you need to click the “Download” button at the bottom of its page to export.

Advantages:

1. Support image, PDF and DjVu files;
2. Export files as Word, Text and searchable PDF format;
3. Allow to rotate or analyze page layout for more accurate OCR results;

Disadvantages:

1. Unstable OCR accuracy;
2. Fail to do OCR sometimes;

12. Free Online OCR

Free Online OCR is a free service enabling users to convert images, scanned PDFs into editable and searchable text, such as DOC, RTF,TXT or PDF. It will rotate the pages automatically for accurate OCR, you can get editable files with nice formatting.

Advantages:

1. Support both image and PDF;
2. Export files as Word, PDF, Text and RTF;

Disadvantages:

1. Unstable OCR accuracy;
2. Need to manually adjust formatting in the output file;

What if Mac Free OCR Tools Fall Short?

However, these online/free mac OCR tools are not suitable for all mac users, you may feel not satisfied in one way or another:

1. There is a size limit of the files;
2. It doesn’t support various input or output format;
3. Risk of privacy leakages;
4. The tool doesn’t support your expected language;
5. The OCR result is not satisfied;
6. It is feature limited;

......

As we all know, “free” means you cannot get everything you desire from the service, if you require higher than those free services can offer, you will need to pay. This is also true to OCR services.

Best Solution If Mac Free OCR Software/Service Not Working

Choices on paid professional OCR software for Mac users are large in quantity. But if you are looking for the one combining simplicity, versatility and affordability, Cisdem PDF Converter OCR is absolutely the best choice.

Cisdem PDF Converter OCR is a dedicated Mac OCR software to convert and create PDF, also perform OCR on scanned documents or images to make them editable & searchable. One thing makes Cisdem outperform its competitors is its high quality OCR performance：accurate OCR results and maintained original formatting.

Use Cisdem to OCR All Files Now

• Convert PDF to 16 formats;
• OCR scanned documents and images into Word, Excel, PPT, Keynote, Pages, etc;
• Convert images;
• Create PDF from virtually all documents;
• Batch conversion;
• High quality OCR and conversion results;

Steps to Perform OCR on Files with Cisdem

1. Add scanned PDF or image to Converter interface.
   Drag and drop, or click '+' to add files.
2. Turn the OCR button ON, choose page range, file language and output format.
3. Optional. Tweak the advanced OCR settings for more accurate results.
   Click the 'Settings' icon, a new interface will appear. You will find all the contents are marked as Texts, Images or Tables in different colorful boxes. If you want to output a part as table, remove the current mark box, click on 'Mark Tables' in the OCR applied zone, then drag a mark box to select the part you want to mark as Tables.
4. Click “Convert” to start OCR.

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We are in the times when paperless office penetrating through our work, we use digitized files on a regular basis. However, there are great chances we need to further edit these non-editable or non-searchable files for different intentions. And OCR is applied to make these scanned files to be editable. For a Mac user, using the best OCR software for mac is often considered as the easiest way to do the OCR job.

Users’ Pick---The Most Affordable & Accurate OCR Software for Mac

You may have noticed that almost all OCR software comes with a relatively high price tag. Yes, OCR is never easy and cheap. But there is one just combines all the things you need, affordability, OCR accuracy and simplicity---Cisdem PDF Converter OCR.

Highlight of Cisdem PDF Converter OCR

• High OCR Accuracy: precisely recognize texts and keep original formatting;
• OCR files in 200+ language;
• Advanced OCR Settings: export specific parts of the file as Text, Image or Table;
• Do OCR on Protected PDFs: auto remove the owner-password protection and perform OCR;
• Batch and Fast OCR;
• Extended features: convert native PDFs, create PDFs from other documents, etc.;
• Low Price--- $59.99/lifetime license and 7/24 technical support;

Easy Step to Use the Best OCR Software for Mac

Step 1Download and install the free trial of Cisdem PDF Converter on Mac.

Drag and drop scaned or image documents into Converter interface.

Step 2Turn OCR button ON.

Choose page range, file language and output format.

(Optional) Use Advanced OCR

If you are not satisfied with current OCR result or you want high-quality OCR, you can click the settings icon to bring up the Advanced OCR interface. You will find all the contents are auto marked as texts, images or tables in different colors. For example, if you want to export a specific area as text, click on “Mark Texts” in the OCR applied zone, then drag a mark box to include the contents you want to mark as texts.

Full List of Top 12 OCR Software for Mac 2021

Do you have any clues about how to pick top OCR software for mac?

The OCR accuracy! And this is just what those free Mac OCR tools cannot guarantee for users. OCR accuracy refers to how much can the OCR software recognize from the files and how much can it maintain in term of formatting, layout, etc. The more it is capable of making the OCR output look the same as the original file, the higher accuracy it can bring, and the better it is.

And basing on this, we finally collect the following list of 12 best OCR software for mac in the year of 2020-2021, with high OCR accuracy.

• No.1 Adobe Acrobat DC

Not surprised that Adobe ranks as No.1, right? We all know the power of Adobe products, a great PDF tool to edit, create, and make interactive PDFs. You can even fill forms, sign, comment, and share, virtually everything you want to do on a PDF with Adobe Acrobat DC.

There is an automatic OCR engine in Adobe Acrobat DC, Acrobat automatically applies optical character recognition (OCR) to your document and converts it to a fully editable copy of your PDF. It also helps to turn scanned documents into searchable PDFs, export PDFs to Office and image formats.

Input format: PDF, Scans

Output format: PDF, Docx, XLSX, PPTX, HTML, Image(JPEG, TIFF, PNG), RTF, Postscript, Text, XML 1.0

Batch OCR: No

OCR Accuracy: High

Price: $14.99/month

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.2 ABBYY FineReader Pro for Mac

ABBYY FineReader Pro is the OCR software combines exceptional OCR and document conversion quality with an intuitive interface. It can precisely recognize text and retain layout with a support of more than 180 languages. You can easily convert PDF to Word on mac, also output the files into various formats like TXT, XSLX, EPBU, HTML, PDF, etc. It also supports batch processing and Text-to-Speech, quite time saving and convenient for every user.

When processing images, the image editor will enable you to improving the quality by correcting brightness and contrast, straightening curved text lines, correcting trapezium distortions, reducing ISO noise and removing motion blur, spliting dual pages, cropping images, and so on.

Input format: PDF, Image(TIFF, JPEG, JPEG 2000, JBIG, JBIG2, GIF, PNG, BMP)

Output format: PDF, PDF/A, DOCX, RTF, XLSX, PPTX, ODT, HTML,TXT,CSV,EPUB,FBS

Batch OCR: No

OCR Accuracy: High

Price:$119.99

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.3 Cisdem PDF Converter OCR

PDF Converter OCR is an enhanced PDF OCR software designed to convert any PDF and images into searchable and editable files. It supports 16 output formats and 200+ languages. The batch conversion feature will save users a lot of time and efforts to deal with multiple scanned documents. With its easy-to-use interface and high quality OCR recognition, no more documents retyping and reformatting will be required.

What's more, this PDF OCR converter enables users to create PDF from many other documents, also protect/unprotect PDFs. Even, you can customize the PDF size and quality within this program.

Input formats: PDF, Image

Output formats: PDF, RTFD, DOCX, DOC, XLSX, PPTX, HTML, TEXT, EPUB, PAGES ,KEYNOTE,JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and TIFF

Batch OCR: Yes

OCR Accuracy: High

Price:$59.99

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.4 Able2Extract Professional 16

Able2Extract Professional 16 is as powerful as Adobe Acrobat, building in all necessary features you will need to handle your PDF files: convert, create, edit, OCR, batch process, fill forms, compare, view, annotate, protect, sign, etc. It outperforms other OCR software in accuracy, even poor quality scanned files can be recognized accurately, because it offers a set of tools to correct skewed content, iron out grainy, turn broken text into smooth fonts…

Also, it does a great job on PDF to Excel conversion, by not only keeping original layout and style, but also customizing the column and row structure of the Excel output. The most impressive is, Able2Extract Pro is well trained to present the tables within a smart template, which makes your Excel output looks the same professional as the original.

While it is pitiful that Able2Extract understands 4 languages only: English, Spanish, French and German. For sure, most of us just need an English OCR, but if you need OCR files in minority languages, Able2Extract seems to be feature limited.

Input format: PDF and Scans

Output format: Docx, XLSX, PPTX, ePub, HTML, AutoCAD, Text, Searchable PDF, Image;

Batch OCR: Yes

OCR Accuracy: High

Price: $149.95

• No.5 Readiris Pro 17 Mac

Readiris Pro 17 Mac is an OCR software for Mac OS built to convert photos and scanned Images into editable formats including:DOCX/RTF/TXT/HTML/IMAGE. It will preserve the original formatting and easily back up your files in Drive/Box/iCloud/Evernote, etc. Particularly for PDF files, Readiris Pro 17 Mac allows users to create, add, merge, delete, edit, sign, and compress pages.

Input formats: JPG, GIF, PSD, PNG, TIFF, BMP, PDF, Scanned images (Image Capture) (TWAIN)

Output formats: PDF, DOCX, XLSX, ODT, ePub, RTF, HTML, TXT, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, MP3, WAV, etc

Batch OCR: No

OCR Accuracy: High

Price:$99

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.6 Foxit PhantomPDF

Foxit PhantomPDF is a PDF tool with vast editing functionalities, you can edit texts and images in your PDF, also add, delete, extract, rotate PDF pages easily. Of course you can manage the PDFs by freely splitting or merging, create PDF, fill out PDF form, sign, protect and annotate PDFs . Foxit PhantomPDF for Mac also comes with a fast OCR technology to convert scanned PDF image, even scans to multiple formats like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML and TXT.

Input format: PDF, Image, Scans

Output format: PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML and TXT

Batch OCR: No

OCR Accuracy: Good

Price:$139

YouTube Video Tutorial

Affordable & Accurate Mac OCR

• OCR scanned & protected PDFs, images
• Output support: Searchable PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Keynote, Pages, ePub, etc.
• Batch, fast and accurate OCR
• Affordable Price $59.99/Lifetime
• OCR files in 200+ languages
• Extended features: convert and create PDFs

• No.7 Prizmo 4

Prizmo 4 is a scanning application with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in 23 languages. Prizmo can be used by everyone, thanks to its support of VoiceOver. Prizmo includes a specific processing depending on the type of document (text, business card, image) you want to process, you are also allowed to manually update or edit recognized information if you want to make some corrections. Even you can share files after OCR processing via iCloud, Evernote, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, WebDAV.

Input format: JPEG, RAW, TIFF,PDF

Outformat: Prizmo Documents (.pzdoc), JPEG, TIFF, PNG, vCards, PDF, RTF, TXT

Batch OCR: Yes

OCR Accuracy: Good

Price:$74.99

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.8 PDFPen

PDFPen is a versatile PDF tool to add signatures, text, and images, to make changes and correct typos, to fill out forms, also to perform OCR mac. As you can see, OCR is just one impressive feature among its versatilities. It can perform OCR on scanned documents, users are allowed to adjust resolution, color depth and contrast, skew and size of an image or scanned document, and also you can have quick edits with the context-sensitive popup-menus.

Input format: PDF and Image

Output format: Word, PDF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF

Batch OCR: No

OCR Accuracy: Good

Price:$74.95

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.9 PDF Element

PDFelement allows you to easily create, edit, annotate or convert your PDF files to other popular formats. PDFelement can detect whether a PDF file is scanned or just native, then make corresponding suggestions to initiate OCR. After OCR, it will open the new created PDF file in PDFelement automatically, then users can click 'EDIT' >'Edit Text' button to modify the text of the PDF file.

Input format:PDF

Output format: PDF, Excel, Docx, Powerpoint, Pages, Epub, RTF, TXT, HTML, Image

Batch OCR: No

OCR Accuracy: Good

Price:$99

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.10 OCR KIT Pro

OCR KIT Pro utilizes OCR technology to recognize the text in the graphic, it can convert any PDF or graphic file into searchable PDF,RTF,HTML and TXT by simple drag&drop the file into its interface. It supports 25 languages and automatic rotation of the file. Also, it builds in a setting interface to adjust the preferences for better OCR.

Input Format:PDF, TIFF, JPEG, JPEG2000, PNG, PNM, BMP, PCX, GIF as well as OpenEXR.

Output Format: PDF, HTML, RTFand TXT.

Batch OCR: No

OCR Accuracy: Medium

Price:€69.99

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.11 PDF OCR X

PDF OCR X is a simple drag-and-drop utility that convert scanned PDF to text or searchable PDF files. This is particularly useful for dealing with PDFs that were created via a Scan-to-PDF function in a scanner or photo copier. It also supports 60 languages and batch conversion.

Input format: GIF, JPG, PNG, BMP, and PICT,PDF

Output format: Text and Searchable PDF.

Batch OCR: Yes

OCR Accuracy: Medium

Price:$29.99

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.12 Lighten PDF Converter OCR

Lighten PDF Converter OCR is a compact PDF tool to export PDF as Microsoft Office, iWork, images and more. Before conversion, it allows enabling OCR on scanned PDF files and supports batch OCR. Comparing with other OCR software, though it hasn’t been updated for some time, it has an excellent support on output format, not so many Mac OCR apps help directly convert PDF to Apple OS document formats: Keynote, Pages and Numbers, it does.

However, it can only recognize 10 languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

Input format:PDF

Output format:Docx, Doc, XLSX, PPTX, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, ePub, RTF, CSV, Text, Image;

Batch OCR:Yes

Best Free Scanning Software For Mac

OCR Accuracy:Good

Price:$34.99

Conclusion

Free Document Scanning Software For Mac Os Catalina

In fact, OCR software with elegant performance on the market is still small in quantity. Among these 12 OCR software, I highly recommend Cisdem PDF Converter OCR or ABBYY FineReader Pro, both are exclusively designed to process OCR on mac, and they do bring highly accurate OCR results.