# ocrmypdf/OCRmyPDF

OCRmyPDF adds an OCR text layer to scanned PDF files, allowing them to be searched

Repository: https://github.com/ocrmypdf/OCRmyPDF
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/ocrmypdf
Homepage: http://ocrmypdf.readthedocs.io/
Language: Python
License: MPL-2.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: python, ocr, pdf, image-processing, tesseract
Last push: 2026-08-22T03:30:49+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 98/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 96, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4639, "days_push": 11, "days_rel": 29, "gap_med": 11.5, "n_releases_24m": 29}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 34589, forks 2395 (observed 2026-08-28T04:12:00.637883+00:00)

## What it is
OCRmyPDF is a Python command-line tool that adds an OCR text layer to scanned PDF files using Tesseract, making them searchable and copy-pasteable. It produces validated PDF/A output with image preprocessing options like deskew, rotation correction, and optimization across multiple CPU cores.

## Use cases
- make scanned pdfs searchable
- add ocr text layer to pdf
- convert scanned documents to searchable pdf/a
- deskew and clean crooked pdf scans
- batch ocr thousands of pages
- ocr pdfs in multiple languages
- extract text from scanned pdfs

## When to choose
- you need a scriptable, battle-tested CLI for OCRing PDFs at scale
- you want PDF/A output with lossless text-layer insertion
- you need multilingual OCR with 100+ Tesseract languages
- you want image preprocessing like deskew and rotation fixes built in

## When to avoid
- you need a GUI-based OCR workflow
- you want to OCR non-PDF documents like Word or plain images without conversion
- you need handwriting recognition, which Tesseract handles poorly

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: stable
- function: ocr, pdf, image-processing, cli
- domain: pdf, files, developer-tools
- platform: windows, python, cli, cross-platform
- tags: tesseract, pdfa, scanned-documents, searchable-pdf, deskew, batch-processing, command-line, linux, macos, docker

## Member repositories
- ocrmypdf/OCRmyPDF (main) score 98

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:12:00.637883+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T16:27:28.422681+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/ocrmypdf/OCRmyPDF (fetched 2026-08-28T04:12:00.637883+00:00, sha 33a3280a168f)
  - homepage: http://ocrmypdf.readthedocs.io/ (fetched 2026-08-29T07:48:12.275419+00:00, sha 53d7a424306c)
  - registry_pypi: https://pypi.org/pypi/ocrmypdf/json (fetched 2026-08-29T07:48:12.284675+00:00, sha 19142297622b)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.