We are in the times when paperless office is penetrating through our work. Regardless of what you need to digitize, say - screenshots, receipts, scanned PDFs, etc. We need software that can help us further edit these non-editable or non-searchable files for different intentions. And OCR is applied to make these scanned or image 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. A professional solution for optical character recognition can save you a long time typing and copying.
There are a large number of OCR software for Mac on the market. Choosing the best one is not that easy. You can't tell the pros and cons of a piece of software just by looking at the product information. In this article we will put together a list of recommended OCR software for Mac, including the latest AI-OCR software. We compare and list all the main features of each app, so please use this information to find the OCR software that suits your needs and can be used in a variety of situations.
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. It is a widely used technology for recognizing text in images. OCR technology appeared in the early 1990s. Since then, the technology has continued to develop and now AI OCR Software also developed.
If a text is scanned or photographed, it is just an image file which can not be edited, searched or copied. OCR identifies texts in image files and converts them into machine readable text. In this way, text data can be managed and edited on a computer, leading to more efficient work.
A good piece of OCR software eliminates the need for manual typing of text and prevents inaccuracies and typos.
The main advantages of OCR technology are time saving, error reducing and effort reduction. OCR software is usually sold together with a PDF editor or converter and costs between 30 and 150 dollars per year.
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 are two programs just combine all the things you need, affordability, OCR accuracy and simplicity---Cisdem PDF Converter OCR and Cisdem OCRWizard, both developed by Cisdem Inc.
The built-in OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine has a good reputation for high accuracy and is used by many users, mainly in companies. It is strong in recognizing low-quality characters such as faxes, copied documents, and handwritten characters, and can also read English, Japanese, German, Chinese, Korean, etc. documents.
Cisdem PDF Converter OCR
Free Download macOS 10.13 or later
PDF Converter OCR is an enhanced PDF OCR software designed to convert any PDF and images into searchable and editable files. It supports 21 output formats and 17+ 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 abundant file formats without errors, like Microsoft Office, iWork, Images and more. Even, you can merge all input files into one well-formatted PDF file within the program.
Input formats: PDF (native and scanned PDF; protected PDF), Image, Scans
Output formats: PDF, RTF, DOCX, DOC, XLSX, PPTX, HTML, TXT, EPUB, PDF/A, XOD, XPS, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, JPG, JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF and SVG
Batch OCR: Yes
OCR Accuracy: Highly Accurate
Pros: Easy to use, Fast OCR, Advanced OCR to export specific PDF parts to wanted format (image, text, table), support OCR 15+ languages, affordable price
Cons: Cannot edit PDFs
Price: $69.99/lifetime
YouTube Video Tutorial
Free Download macOS 10.13 or later 
Another top recommendation is OCRWizard, which is meant for extracting texts, tables, data, etc. from images and scanned files efficiently. Differing from PDF Converter OCR, this software actually pays more attention to image data extraction, though it also allows the input of PDF files. There are 7 different recognition modes for images: convert single or high-volume images, extract text from a certain area in images, recognize texts in screenshots or handwritten documents and so on. Furthermore, it supports most popular image formats (such as JPG, BMP, PNG) and 25 OCR languages.
For a better character recognition, you can enhance the quality of your scanned files. Besides, OCRWizard will empower you to adjust some advanced settings, to decide which selection in the imported file to be recognized or ignored and preview the document properties.
Input formats: PDF, Image, Scans
Output formats: TXT, DOCX, RTF, EXCEL
Batch OCR: Yes
OCR Accuracy: Highly Accurate
Pros: All functions accessible easily; Quick OCR with 99% accuracy; Support almost all images and PDF documents; Recognize texts in 25 languages; Extract texts from handwritten documents; low cost.
Cons: fewer output formats like PDF Converter OCR
Price: $59.99/lifetime
Free Download macOS 10.13 or later
High OCR accuracy 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 14 other best OCR software for mac in the year of 2023 and for the following 2024, with high OCR accuracy.
| Best OCR App | OCR Format | OCR Accuracy | Batch OCR | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No.3 Adobe Acrobat DC | PDF, Scans | Highly Accurate | × |
$14.99/month |
| No.4 ABBYY FineReader Pro for Mac | PDF, Image, Scans | Highly Accurate | × | $69/year |
| No.5 Able2Extract | PDF, Scans | Highly Accurate | √ | $199.95/lifetime |
| No.6 Readiris | PDF, Image, Scans | Highly Accurate | × | $99/lifetime |
| No.7 Foxit PhantomPDF | PDF, Image, Scans | Highly Accurate | × | $149/year |
| No. 8 Kofax Power PDF Standard | PDF, Image | Accurate | √ | $129/year |
| No.9 Prizmo | PDF and Image | Accurate | √ | $74.99/year |
| No.10 PDFPen | PDF and Image | Accurate | × | $106.08/lifetime |
| No.11 PDF Element | PDF and Image | Accurate | × | $79.99/year |
| No.12 OCR KIT Pro | PDF and Image | Medium | × | €69.99/lifetime |
| No.13 PDF OCR X | PDF and Image | Medium | √ | $29.99/lifetime |
| No. 14 Aiseesoft PDF Converter Ultimate | Medium | √ | $49.95/lifetime | |
| No.15 Lighten PDF Converter OCR | Medium | √ | $34.99/lifetime | |
| No. 16 Easy Screen OCR | Screenshot | Medium | × | $49/year |
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 (you also gain access to documents from cloud services) 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: Highly Accurate
Pros: Best PDF solutions to support all PDF editing tasks, create/convert/OCR PDFs with high quality
Cons: High price tag, Handwriting cannot currently be recognized.
Price: $14.99/month
YouTube Video Tutorial
ABBYY FineReader Pro is the OCR software combines exceptional OCR and document conversion quality with an intuitive interface. With an accuracy of over 98% it can precisely recognize text and retain layout with a support of more than 180 languages. Now, this software is also AI-based, 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, splitting 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: Highly Accurate
Pros: Highly preserve original file formatting, easy to use, support various output formats, support OCR 200+ languages
Cons: Mac version doesn’t support Compare files
Price: $69/year
YouTube Video Tutorial
Able2Extract Professional 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: Highly Accurate
Pros: Preview conversion result before converting, AI-assisted conversions, convert any file to Excel
Cons: Support OCR 4 languages only
Price: $199.95/lifetime
YouTube Video Tutorial
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: Highly Accurate
Pros: Manage PDF files efficiently and easily, support OCR 130+ languages
Cons: Take time to load large files, cannot unlock and open protected PDFs
Price: $99/lifetime
YouTube Video Tutorial
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: Highly Accurate
Pros: A great alternative to Adobe Acrobat but with a simple interface similar to MS office
Cons: Speed and quality is scarified when dealing with large or complex PDFs
Price: $149/year
YouTube Video Tutorial
For the reason that Kofax acquired Document Imaging division of Nuance in 2019, Kofax Power PDF Standard for Mac has replaced Nuance Power PDF for some time, they share most of the same features but Kofax has a new look and feel.
Kofax has a high compatibility with other office programs and offers virtually all features that Adobe Acrobat gives to user: create PDF, protect PDF, sign PDF, convert and OCR PDF to all MS Office formats, edit and markup PDF easily, review and collaborate on PDF efficiently, fill PDF, etc. However, the Mac version has less features than the Windows version. It can proofread and correct text after OCR conversion, also support batch OCR to save your time.
Input format: PDF, Image
Output format: Word, Excel, PDF, PowerPoint, WordPerfect, XPS, TIFF, MP3
Batch OCR: Yes
OCR Accuracy: Highly accurate
Pros: Easy to use, support various input and output format, especially all MS Office document types
Cons: Lose formatting a little after OCR, slow to process files, less editing tools than other PDF editors
Price: $129/year
YouTube Video Tutorial
Prizmo 5 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
Output format: Prizmo Documents (.pzdoc), JPEG, TIFF, PNG, vCards, PDF, RTF, TXT
Batch OCR: Yes
OCR Accuracy: Accurate
Pros: Support cloud-based OCR, recognize business card, batch edit files
Cons: Support OCR 20+ languages only, limited output formats
Price: $74.99/year
YouTube Video Tutorial
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: Accurate
Pros: Context-sensitive for quick edits
Cons: Buggy and slow, support limited output formats
Price: $106.08/lifetime
YouTube Video Tutorial
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. The software allows you to convert batches of files which is ideal for saving time when you have many files to be converted.
Input format: PDF
Output format: PDF, Excel, Docx, Powerpoint, Pages, Epub, RTF, TXT, HTML, Image
Batch OCR: No
OCR Accuracy: Accurate
Pros: Easy to use, competitive price, support various input and output formats
Cons: Crash sometimes, cannot recognize special characters
Price: $79.99/year
YouTube Video Tutorial
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 and 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
Pros: Offer both free and pro versions, simply drag and drop to use
Cons: need to revise OCR errors, limited output formats
Price: €69.99/lifetime
YouTube Video Tutorial
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
Pros: Easy to use
Cons: Need to revise OCR errors, limited output formats
Price: $29.99/lifetime
YouTube Video Tutorial
This tool is mainly used to convert PDF documents. It can turn PDFs to about 10 formats including word and excel. Though it is not that competent to deal with complex PDFs, it works on simple PDFs fast and well. Users can configure the preferences and apply to all conversions, which speeds up the process. Also, it allows users to preview, rename files.
Input format: PDF
Output format: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, ePub, HTML, RTF, Text, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TGA, TIFF
Batch OCR: Yes
OCR Accuracy: Medium
Pros: Support various input and output format, 3 OCR modes (accuracy, balanced, speed)
Cons: Need to revise OCR errors, support only 20+ languages, slow OCR processing
Price: $49.95/lifetime
YouTube Video Tutorial:
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
OCR Accuracy: Medium
Pros: Easy to use, Support batch OCR, support many output formats
Cons: The program hasn’t been updated for 2 years
Price: $34.99/lifetime
If your OCR mainly focus on recognizing screenshots, then Easy Screen OCR is good for you.
It’s a simple tool to capture and recognize texts from screenshots on your Mac, you can either copy the text to other document processor or translate it to a lot of languages. It lets users to configure the preferences, such as shortcut, screenshot format, OCR language and target language for translation, however, users cannot do much to customize or enhance the OCR.
Input format: screenshot
Output format: text
Batch OCR: No
OCR Accuracy: Medium
Pros: Easy to use, copy image text to clipboard or translate
Cons: OCR screenshot only and to text only
Price: $49/year
The choice of which is the best OCR software for Mac depends mostly on your field of activity, the state of your documents and the volume of processing required. Criteria such as OCR accuracy, user-friendliness, language support and price-performance ratio determine whether a particular application is a good option. Here are some tips to help you choose the best one.
You now know more about OCR technology, it is a fascinating software genre that quickly proves itself in everyday life. However, OCR software with elegant performance on the market is still small in quantity. We suggest that you don't waste time and staff on tedious tasks and get the good Mac OCR Software with high text recognition. Among these 16 OCR software, I highly recommend Cisdem PDF Converter OCR, Cisdem OCRWizard or ABBYY FineReader Pro for Mac, all of which come with a highly accurate OCR result and reasonable price.
Jose specializes in reviews, how-to guides, top lists, etc. on PDF, data recovery and multi-media. On his spare time, he likes to travel or challenge some extreme sports.
Paul Cohen
Some of the listed tools are PDF editors, right? I am considering about an OCR converter, will try on each one and thanks.
Jadon
Yes, nothing can outperform Adobe on managing PDFs, but in view of OCR ability, professional ocr tools do better, I will try ABBYY and OCRWIZARD, these 2 got a huge fame among users.
Elisa
A good list to share, gonna try the top 3 tools to edit my scanned PDFs.