How do I extract text from an image?
Drop the picture above and press Read. Tesseract runs inside the browser first and returns the text it finds. If that read comes back weak, the image is offered to an AI reader for a second opinion, and the result always says which engine produced it.
How do I copy text from an image?
Once the read finishes, use the Copy button to put the whole result on your clipboard, or select part of the output and copy normally. The text stays editable, so you can fix a stray character before pasting.
Can I convert a picture to text for free?
Yes. Up to ten images at a time, no account, no watermark and no page cap. The in-browser pass costs nothing and never leaves your device.
Which languages can it read?
The browser engine ships with English plus Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. Pick the language before reading, because guessing wrong hurts accuracy more than a blurry photo does.
Are my images uploaded?
Only when the reader on your device cannot cope. On the Auto setting every image is read locally first, by an engine downloaded to your browser, and it is sent on only if that read scores below 90 percent confidence or finds nothing. Set the reader to browser only and nothing is ever uploaded, at the cost of accuracy on hard pictures. When an image does go to the AI reader it is sent to a model provider for the length of the request, is not stored by us, and is not used to train anything. Adding an image by link is a separate case, where our server fetches the file once and passes the bytes straight to your browser.
Which one is more accurate?
For screenshots, PDFs turned into images, and flat scans of printed text, browser reading is fast and close to perfect. The AI reader wins on anything awkward: photographs taken at an angle, creased receipts, faint thermal print, handwriting, columns, and tables that need their shape preserved. The tool measures its own confidence after a browser pass and offers to re-read weak results for you.
What are the limits?
Ten images in one batch and a hundred reads a day, resetting at midnight UTC. A read is one pass, so an image that Auto sends on to the AI reader uses two. Nothing is charged and no account is needed. If every free AI model is busy, which happens at peak times, the page offers a paid model instead. It stays free for you; the cost is ours.
Can it read handwriting?
The AI reader often can, especially neat handwriting on a plain background. Browser reading essentially cannot: it is trained on printed type and will produce noise from a handwritten page. Pick the AI reader before you start rather than after.
How do I get a better result?
Fill the frame with the text, get the page square to the camera, and use even light without a shadow across the middle. Sharpness matters more than resolution, and a photo of a screen will always read worse than a screenshot of it. If a language other than English is in the picture, set it in the language box first, because the wrong setting is the single most common cause of garbled output.