Do I need OCR for scanned PDFs or can I just use PDF text extraction?

It depends on whether the scanned PDF actually contains selectable text.

Use normal PDF text extraction if:

• The PDF was generated digitally from Word, InDesign, etc.
• You can select/copy text in the PDF viewer
• The text layer is present and readable by tools like pdftotext, PyPDF2, pdfplumber, etc.

Use OCR if:

• The PDF is a scan/image-based PDF
• Clicking or dragging over the page does not select text
• The PDF is basically just images of pages
• The document has handwritten text or low-quality scans

Quick rule:

• Selectable text = extraction
• No selectable text = OCR

Best practice:

A lot of scanned PDFs are hybrid:

• They may have an image of the page plus a hidden OCR text layer
• In that case, text extraction may already work
• If the extracted text is empty or garbage, run OCR

Practical workflow:

1. Try text extraction first
2. If results are empty, incomplete, or poor quality, use OCR
3. For large-scale processing, detect whether a page has extractable text before deciding

If you want, I can also give you a simple Python check to tell whether a PDF needs OCR.