OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is a technology that makes it possible to scan and detect text out of an image document which is scanned and contains text. It is not necessary that the document should be scanned, it can be a soft copy of a document which can be made by taking a screenshot of a text document. However it is necessary that it must contain some text to be detected and recognized by the OCR scanner. In simple terms, is popularly known as ‘image to text’ conversion.

I personally had been dealing with these OCR software for a long time, and thought it should be worth sharing about the services that I like and have been using for Image to text conversions. There are some image to text conversion software available but most of them are usually paid ones or not so good to do the job efficiently. This is why I prefer online services for this and I’ve researched many of those but sharing best 5 of those that I’ve found and have been using. You may consider the list below a ranked list.

1. Free-online-ocr.com

The best I’ve found so far. It has got the cleanest interface so that a new user would get the idea how and where to upload and convert the image to text. It gives you options to convert documents into 4 popular formats – .doc, .pdf, .rtf, .txt. It accepts all popular formats of images as input: PDF, GIF, BMP, JPEG, TIFF or PNG.

The conversion speed is really impressive and you’re given the converted the converted straight away which you can directly copy or download as the selected file format. They also offer a desktop version of their service but again that’s a paid one so why should we pay for that when we can do it online.

2. NewOCR.com

Another good service. The interface is bit cluttered but the conversion speed and other options make this one 2nd favorite of mine. It gives you option to enter the direct link of the image file as the input so won’t necessarily have to upload the file for conversion. Plus there is an option to choose the language of input file and an option to rotate the input image.

3. OnlineOCR.net

With an easy to use interface, onlineocr.net is another good choice of online image to text conversion needs. It supports upto 32 different languages of input files and besides the common output formats (pdf, txt, doc) it gives to .xls or MS excel file format in output choice as well.

There is a limit of 15 images per hour for users who don’t sign up to use the service. You may however sign up to remove the limitation.

4. Free-OCR.com

Another simple and straight forward free OCR service. You don’t have to signup or give your email address to get started. However as a free service you can’t upload a file bigger than 2MB. You either have to input a file smaller than that or break a big file into 2MB chunks to use this service.

5. i2OCR.com

Another good choice of an online image to text conversion. Requires no sign up and there’s no limitation of uploaded file size or number of input files. You can choose between 33 different languages before converting your file. The interface is very responsive and not cluttered with ads and other unnecessary stuff.