Foxit OCR Alternative: What to Check Before Switching

A Foxit OCR alternative is worth the change when your problem is something Foxit's OCR was not built around: people without a Foxit seat who need text from scans, or tables that have to end up in a spreadsheet. If you mainly need searchable PDFs plus redaction and Bates numbers, Foxit already covers that.

Before you switch anything, pin down what Foxit does today, according to Foxit. The first two sections do that from Foxit's user manual and pricing page. The rest covers reasons to look elsewhere, what stays behind if you leave, and a way to test a replacement on your own documents.

How does Foxit make a PDF searchable?

Foxit PDF Editor makes a PDF searchable with its Recognize Text command, found under the Convert tab. You choose the pages, the language and an output type. With a searchable output type, Foxit places the recognized words on an invisible layer of text in the PDF, which makes the scanned text selectable and searchable.

That account comes from the "OCR PDFs and PDF Portfolios" chapter of the Foxit PDF Editor user manual for Windows. The manual is written for the Windows program. Foxit also sells a macOS app and a web app, and this post makes no claim that their menus match.

The steps Foxit documents for one file

1. Click Convert > Recognize Text > Current File.
2. In the Recognize Text dialog box, set the page range.
3. Choose the language of the document. The manual says you can select more than one.
4. Choose the output type.
5. Optionally tick Find All Suspect, so that results the program is unsure of are shown for review when recognition ends.
6. Click OK, then search the document to confirm the text is there.

The manual also mentions a Quick Recognition command on the Home and Convert tabs. It runs all pages with the default settings, or with the settings you last used.

The three output types

This is the choice that matters most if you want a Foxit searchable PDF that still looks like the scan.

With Searchable Image Text or Editable Text selected, the manual says you can set a DPI value under Downsample To, which compresses the images in the document to cut the file size. That changes the page image. The manual does not list a downsample control for the "original image" variant. If the picture of each page has to remain as scanned, that is the setting to ask Foxit about, and the result to compare against your source file.

Foxit's general approach to the hidden layer is the same idea described in what makes a scanned PDF searchable.

Suspects, batches and scanners

Three more documented features belong in any fair account of how to make a PDF searchable in Foxit.

• OCR suspects. Where a substitution is uncertain, Foxit marks the text as an OCR suspect. Under Convert > Suspect Results, a dialog shows the original document text beside the OCR text. You can correct the text, accept it, or mark something as "Not Text".
• Many files at once. Convert > Recognize Text > Multiple Files takes files, folders or open documents, with output options for the destination folder and file naming.
• At scan time. The manual's scanner settings include a "Make Searchable (run OCR)" item, so a page can be recognized as it is scanned.

Foxit can also start by itself. The manual says the program can detect that a PDF is scanned or image-based when you open it and suggest running OCR.

Which Foxit editions include OCR?

Foxit's pricing page lists OCR in both subscription plans it sells, PDF Editor and PDF Editor+. Foxit also sells a perpetual licence, and the pricing page gives no feature list for it. The Windows user manual uses older edition names and reserves one OCR feature, recognizing a selected region, for the edition it calls Pro.

The two Foxit documents name the editions differently, so here they are side by side.

The pricing page puts the difference between the two subscriptions elsewhere. According to Foxit, PDF Editor+ adds mobile apps for iOS and Android, Foxit eSign with 150 envelopes a year, and AI-powered Smart Redact. It lists PDF Editor for Windows, macOS and web.

There is also a free route. Foxit has an online OCR PDF tool that runs in a browser. Foxit's page for it says files are handled by Foxit cloud servers and are automatically deleted after OCR is complete. The same page says the online tool turns image text into editable text, "which may alter the appearance of your PDF", and that the Searchable Image Text output is available in Foxit PDF Editor+. So the free tool and the desktop program do not produce the same kind of file.

One practical point from the manual: the first time you run OCR, Foxit may prompt you to download an OCR component, and a separate engine for Chinese, Japanese and Korean text. On a locked-down firm computer, that download may need IT.

When is a Foxit OCR alternative worth the change?

A Foxit OCR alternative is worth it when the work has moved past what a per-user PDF editor is for. The triggers are access, output and cost shape. None of them is a judgment about how well Foxit reads a page, which only a test on your own documents can settle.

Run through these questions. Each "yes" is a reason to look, and each "no" is a reason to stay.

1. Do people without a licence need text from scans? Foxit prices its plans per user. If a paralegal with a seat has become the office's conversion desk, the tool is limiting who can do the work.
2. Is the output you need something other than a PDF? Foxit's pricing page lists conversion to Word, Excel and PowerPoint. If what you need is a table as CSV, or pages as JSON for another system, check whether your edition gives you that directly.
3. Do staff work on computers Foxit is not installed on? A borrowed laptop or a home machine will not have the desktop program.
4. Is your scanning uneven? A firm that converts 3,000 pages one month and 40 the next pays the same for seats in both.
5. Is installation a recurring chore? Each new computer needs the program, and possibly the OCR component.

And three reasons not to move:

• Your documents may not leave the firm's computers. A desktop program run locally is the simple answer to that, and the comparison of online OCR and desktop OCR for law firms explains why.
• You correct recognition by hand. Foxit's suspect review is a documented feature. Not every tool has an equivalent.
• OCR is one step in a production you also redact and number in the same sitting.

One reasonable outcome is that Foxit stays and a second tool is added for the jobs Foxit was never bought for. Replacing one desktop editor with another is a different decision. The posts on a Nitro PDF OCR alternative and a Kofax Power PDF alternative cover two other desktop editors.

Foxit's redaction and Bates tools that stay behind

If you swap Foxit for a converter, you leave behind its redaction tools and its Bates numbering. A text converter does neither. Foxit documents both in its manual, and a litigation practice that produces documents needs both somewhere.

Redaction

The manual describes redaction as a two-step process. You mark text, graphics or whole pages under Protect > Mark for Redaction, then apply the redactions. The manual warns that applying them cannot be undone. Related tools it documents:

• Search & Redact, which finds words or phrases in one PDF or across the PDFs in a folder, provided those files contain searchable text.
• Whiteout, which erases content to a white background.
• Smart Redact, an optional AI-based plug-in for finding sensitive information such as names of people and organizations.

Note the dependency in the first item. Search & Redact works on searchable text, so in Foxit a scan has to be recognized before it can be searched for terms to redact. The order of those two steps has consequences of its own, covered in whether to OCR before or after redaction.

With the text layer in place, look through the output for the number on the exhibit, a name in the pleading caption, and the date you see on the deposition. If this discovery file also holds a subpoena, search the appearance date. Compare what search highlights with the page before you call the scan ready.

Bates numbering

Under Organize > Bates Numbering > Add, the manual describes adding files or folders, setting their order, and inserting a Bates number with a chosen number of digits (from 3 to 15), a start number, an increment, and a prefix or suffix. Output options can add the Bates range to each file name and create a log file. Remove All takes the numbers off again.

Which edition has them

Foxit's two documents differ here too. The Windows manual heads these sections "Redaction (Pro Only)" and "Bates Numbering (Pro Only)". The current pricing page ticks "Manual redaction" and "Bates numbering" for both PDF Editor and PDF Editor+, and ticks Smart Redact for PDF Editor+ only. If you hold an older perpetual licence, open the Protect and Organize tabs and see what your copy actually shows before assuming either answer.

Other things a converter does not do

The same manual documents scanning directly from a scanner, editing text in place, and comparing files. None of that moves with you. Whatever replaces Foxit's OCR, something still has to do this work, which means keeping a PDF editor on the desks that do it.

Foxit PDF Editor compared with a text-and-tables converter

Foxit PDF Editor is a program for working on PDFs, with OCR as one feature. A text-and-tables converter does one job: it reads pages and hands back their content in other formats. They overlap on a single output, the searchable PDF, and differ nearly everywhere else.

The Foxit column below comes from Foxit's manual and pricing page. The converter column describes Schema Law, from its own list of plans and homepage. Where a cell says "not offered", it means exactly that.

Three notes on reading the table.

First, it says nothing about recognition quality, because neither vendor's description can settle that for your documents. Only your own pages can.

Second, the "not offered" cells are real gaps. A firm that picks a converter still needs a tool for redaction, numbering and page-level PDF work.

Third, the two can sit side by side without conflict. A searchable PDF exported from a converter opens in Foxit like any other PDF, where it can be redacted and numbered. Schema Law's exports are listed under export formats on the homepage.

A two-week trial for a Foxit replacement

Give a replacement two weeks, with the first for setup and a fixed test set and the second for live work beside Foxit. Decide the pass marks before you start. A trial without written criteria turns into an argument about impressions.

Foxit's pricing page offers a 14-day free trial of PDF Editor+. Check what the candidate offers. Schema Law has a Free plan limited to one document a day of up to three pages, enough to try a few single pages. For the full test set you need a paid month, and Solo is $49 a month.

Before day one

• Pick 20 to 30 documents from closed matters that look like your real intake: a clean contract, a faxed letter, a bank statement with tables, a stamped court order, a two-column brief, a page with handwriting in the margin.
• Confirm that each may be uploaded to an outside service if the candidate is a website. Leave out anything under a protective order.
• Write down what you will measure. A sample scorecard is below.

Week one: the fixed set

1. Run every document through Foxit with your usual settings. Save the outputs in a folder named for Foxit.
2. Run the same documents through the candidate. Save those in a second folder.
3. For each document, check five facts against the paper or the scan: a party name, a date, a dollar amount, a paragraph number and one line from the last page.
4. For the documents with tables, open the spreadsheet output and total one column.
5. Record minutes spent per document, including any cleanup.

Week two: live work

1. Give the candidate to two people who do not have a Foxit seat. Let them use it on real, permitted documents.
2. Keep Foxit in use for everything it normally handles.
3. Each day, note any job the candidate could not do and any job that never reached the Foxit seat-holder.
4. On the last day, total the pages each tool handled and what each cost for the period.

The scorecard

Fill it in with counts, not adjectives. If the candidate wins on access and tables while Foxit remains necessary for redaction and Bates work, the result is "both", and you can size each licence to match. A longer set of criteria is in the scorecard for comparing legal OCR software, and the arithmetic for comparing seats with page plans is in the post on OCR cost per page.