--- title: "ABBYY FineReader PDF Reviews 2026. Verified Reviews, Pros & Cons | Capterra" description: "Is ABBYY FineReader PDF the right PDF Editor solution for you? Explore 434 verified user reviews from people in industries like yours to make a confident choice." source_url: "https://www.capterra.com/p/65868/ABBYY-FineReader/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" --- ABBYY FineReader PDF 4.7 (434) [View alternatives](https://www.capterra.com/p/65868/ABBYY-FineReader/alternatives/) Provider data verified by our Software Research team, and reviews moderated by our Reviews Verification team. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/our-story/) * * * Last updated August 26th, 2026 # Reviews of ABBYY FineReader PDF Ease of use 4.5 Customer Service 4.4 ## Pros and Cons in Reviews ML Matthew L TeacherEducation Management, Self-employedUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “It helped me gather pages and pages of text and convert it for use in world processing.“ April 25, 2026 JF Jon Loar F AdministratorOnline Media, Self-employedUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “Do not see any way to scan and translate gotic letters.“ September 9, 2024 ML Matthew L TeacherEducation Management, Self-employedUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “Very helpful for someone working in education or research but modern phones have similar functionality built in now.“ April 25, 2026 AR Ana Catalina R AsesoraAlternative Medicine, 2 - 10 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months. “When the source images are not of high quality, OCR fails, so it is necessary to edit by hand.“ January 12, 2024 VY Vishnu Y Warehouse ExecutiveLogistics and Supply Chain, 51 - 200 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “You can easily create, edit PDFs, or even convert your documents to PDF files.“ February 16, 2025 EP Emre P LecturerWriting and Editing, Self-employedUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “The fact that its "inverting color option" is not available on Macos bothers me quite a lot.“ December 14, 2023 PC Paul C Ingeniero CivilCivil Engineering, Self-employedUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “It helped me a lot in converting my scanned documents into searchable PDF files and extracting tables and text with a high degree of confidence.“ May 29, 2024 PS Philip S Product ManagerInformation Technology and Services, 11 - 50 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “The only thing that can cause a problem is the not always accurate conversion from PDF to Excel.“ May 22, 2024 ## Showing most helpful reviews Showing 1-25 of 434 Reviews Sort by: Most Helpful Rating Company Size Reviewer's Role Length of Use Frequency of Use Ashish S. Proprietor Computer Software Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Good Editing Tools" August 20, 2026 5.0 ABBYY FineReader PDF is a powerful and reliable tool for document conversion, text recognition (OCR), and PDF editing. It converts scanned papers into editable files with high accuracy and saves time on office tasks. Pros ABBYY FineReader PDF is best liked for its high-accuracy OCR (optical character recognition) that converts scanned paper and images into searchable, editable text across 190+ languages, alongside its reliable layout retention and seamless PDF editing and conversion tools. Cons Least liked features of ABBYY FineReader PDF often include its high price for casual users, occasional errors when reading complex or multi-column layouts, and a heavy system resource load during large batch processing tasks. Review Source YH Yehuda H. Professor Higher Education Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Great value- I use it everyday" August 20, 2026 5.0 Pros I use the FineReader as my primary PDF viewer and editor. The FineReader is a great value for money. It does a pretty good job with OCR and data extraction; the only thing better is dedicated OCR software. The editing software works really, really well. Cons Scanning is decent, though somewhat slow. The erase function for editing sometimes takes on too much of the background and can sometimes may everything black. I would prefer that it would default to white. Switched from [Adobe Acrobat](https://www.capterra.com/p/251329/Adobe-Acrobat-DC/) Price, price, price, price, price, price, price, price, price, Review Source RS Ricardo S. Translator Writing and Editing Used the software for: 2+ years ### "After years Abbyy still carries several disappointing defects that don't justify it's price " June 23, 2023 3.0 It's impresses me that I've been using Abby for many years and it still carries many of the same defects it has always had; it sometimes does perfect conversions into Ms word but quite oftenly it renders a file in which I have to make many corrections before start working with it. The precisión to detect the characters has improved over the years and sometimes it can detect complex tables, which is nice to see, but regarding tables with not clear imprinted lines the program files to detect them at all. Pros That only sometimes renders a perfect conversion into Ms word that I can use to work, and I mean a file where I don't have to remake any parts of the text or recapture images, etc. Cons That it changes the page I'm working on just by scrolling, that's tedious. That's solves many of the text by putting it into a floating case box, and that's terrible and cannot be turned off. That many obvious tables are not detected by Abbyy when automatic converting, specially those without visible lines. That it fails to detect structures when converting scanned pages. That the function of detecting the headers and foots almost always fails, but instead it tries to convert as headers parts of the text that are not. Correcting all the above is time-consuming, which is contrary to the purpose of this program. And recently there is a contradiction between doing things in the main window of the OCR editor I'm doing them at the detailed window, for example if I try to select one cell to be treated as an image, it's conflicts the problem if I chose it at the main window or at the detail window, with the first one generally overriding the second. I'm now in Windows 11 the program crashes a lot. Reason for choosing ABBYY FineReader PDF I use Abbyy along with the other programs because none of them can actually generate a proper conversion of a PDF into Ms word, except for rare occasions when this happens. Review Source MA MYRTO A. Library and Documentation Assistant Libraries Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "A reliable and time-saving PDF management tool" August 20, 2026 5.0 My overall experience with ABBYY FineReader PDF has been very positive. I use it mainly for work, especially for document scanning, PDF document management, document management, and data extraction. It helps me organize and work with scanned material more efficiently, search inside documents, extract text and information, and convert files into editable formats. It saves me considerable time, and I believe it offers good value for money because I use these features regularly in my work. Pros I especially like the PDF document management, document scanning, and data extraction features. The software makes it easy to convert scanned documents into searchable and editable text, extract the information I need, and manage large PDF files efficiently. These features save me a lot of time in my daily work. Cons Some advanced document management and editing features can take a little time to learn at first. Also, depending on the quality and complexity of a scanned document, some extracted text may occasionally need minor corrections. Review Source Geoffrey D. Proprietor Printing Used the software for: 2+ years ### "ABBYY works for me" August 22, 2026 4.0 Now that I know the limitations of ABBYY I am very happy for what it can do and I use to frequently. About once a week. Pros I use Abbyy for scanning pages. It is very useful in doing that into Word. I also use ABBYY to scan tables into Excel. Cons I notice that when I try to scan to Excel it takes about two pages to be able to sort out what is required. The first two can have text in all sorts of places. Also I find that for continous scanning I have to 'finish scanning' to be able to allow for different page text sizes. Review Source MAS Maria Antonietta S. Translator Translation and Localization Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Great tool" August 20, 2026 5.0 It's a great programme I would most certainly recommend it to anyone who wishes to convert files to different formats. Pros It's a great conversion tool and speeds up my translation process as well as producing formatted documents. Cons Can't fault the programme. Perhaps the OCR component could be improved so that the final product is more like the original. Review Source HRL Hyung R. L. president Research Used the software for: 2+ years ### "A useful tool to liberate the space by making a thick book into an e -book" June 10, 2025 4.0 I have been using this product for more than four or five years. Of course, the recognition rate is not as perfect as the Google lens, but when we process a lot of content, there is no such software, so we will continue to subscribe this year. However, there is a regret that the recognition rate of things like brackets will be improved. Pros It is mainly used to scan a book in Korean and make it an e-book. It is easier to use because of less error than any other program. Even if you are graffiti in the book, you can erase it and edit it is very useful. It is an essential tool for eliminating and digitizing paper books that occupy a lot of space. Cons Books published in Korean are often used in other countries that are not used well in other countries. For example, these are symbols such as bumps, double labels, screens, and overlapping. These symbols are used in book titles, papers, and magazine names. It is often very inconvenient because it is often not aware of these things. Review Source ML Matthew L. Teacher Education Management Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Books to electronic text." April 25, 2026 5.0 Excellent product. Very helpful for someone working in education or research but modern phones have similar functionality built in now. Pros Used this mainly for its ability to convert scanned text from images to text on a computer. It helped me gather pages and pages of text and convert it for use in world processing. Cons Sometimes there are misreadings but this was often due to the quality of the file it was asked to scan. Review Source VY Vishnu Y. Warehouse Executive Logistics and Supply Chain Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Excellent PDF editing tool with many features" February 16, 2025 5.0 My overall experience with ABBYY FineReader PDF has been exceptional. Pros It is an excellent PDF editing tool that offers you an all-in-one PDF solution in one place. You can easily create, edit PDFs, or even convert your documents to PDF files. You can easily merge multiple PDFs into one PDF file or split a PDF document into multiple PDFs. Even you can compress them to a smaller size. You can save time and money by signing PDFs digitally instead of manually printing and signing them. Cons Currently, I have no dislike about ABBYY FineReader PDF. Review Source FB Fanny B. Translator Consumer Services Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Abbyy, change your habits ! " March 28, 2025 5.0 Abbyy is very easy to use, I can convert my file and I save a lot of time. I use abbyy everyday for 3 years. It changed my life. Pros I love the flexibility and the ergonomics Cons Nothing, very useful. The best quality price software. Review Source AY Amanda Y. Owner Insurance Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "Easy to navigate" May 22, 2024 4.0 Pros The main features my office utilizes is merging/organizing pages and editing content. ABBY makes both of these tasks quick and easy, even for less tech savvy employees. Cons Not a real con for the program, my office uses ABBY for basic functions, I am sure there are a lot of features offered that I cannot speak on. Alternatives considered [Adobe Acrobat Reader](https://www.capterra.com/p/170833/Acrobat-Reader-DC/) Switched from [Adobe Acrobat Reader](https://www.capterra.com/p/170833/Acrobat-Reader-DC/) When I was going to renew my Adobe subscription the price increased, I found ABBY and thought it seemed like a comparable product at a better price. Review Source SL Stephen L. Principal IPPTS Associates Environmental Services Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Great to Rebuild Old Magazine Articles for Republishing Online" May 15, 2025 5.0 I get the best results of any tool I've used with this software. Pros Ability to scan and convert image files to documents while doing a pretty good job at preserving the formatting. Cons The best way I know to recreate electronic versions of old magazine articles as they were when published for re-publishing online. Review Source CAB Carol Ann B. Property Manager Real Estate Used the software for: Less than 6 months ### "Perfect Document Format" February 17, 2025 5.0 I am now able to send and receive PDFs with out fear of not being able to open them or edit. Pros once installed, it made working with PDF files a breeze. no more having to convert to a word doc Cons it is relatively easy to use and understand, so there is really np0othing to complain about here. Review Source HN Hoshang N. Researcher Research Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "Use Abbyy as your pdf resder and editor" September 25, 2024 4.0 I have used it even for other languages. It is great Pros Abbyy is a great pdf reader and editor. I am.very happy with this aplication Cons Editing pdf with Abbyy is brolliant..even for languages from right to left Review Source VR Verified Reviewer General Manager-Finance & Administraion Food Production Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Best User Friendly OCR Software available in the market to save your money and time in 2023" January 11, 2023 5.0 Sometimes we doesn’t have enough time to type or spend to write a formal letter in our busy works schedule. There are lot of solutions are available in the Google or digital world, one of those alternative, I found ABBYY FineReader as one of best alternative I have ever used. This is basically a OCR software, which convert any digital readable data into a editable and readable data as per your requirements. This is a PDF the executives Software intended to deal with the specific office and personal works with maintaining quality and requisite parameters of the works. It empowers Beginner as well as Professional also to support their effectiveness in the advanced working environment in their home or office. ABBYY FineReader improves on the assignment of digitization of actual records and facilitates post-digitization handling. It incorporates altering, recovering, document assurance, coordinated effort, sharing, and so on. ABBYY FineReader is an Optical Person Acknowledgment (OCR) application with PDF altering highlights. This PDF programming permits the transformation of picture records, for example, pictures, filters PDF documents, and screen catches into editable record designs. In light of an ABBY FineReader audit, its valuing plans are very reasonable. It has a free preliminary.To summarize, ABBY FineReader is one of the most outstanding programming for PDF downloading, altering, marks, and record the executives also. Pros It is perfect for working with these records and digitizes archives without any problem into various formats , as Microsoft Succeed, Rich Text Configuration, Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, HTML, PDF/A, accessible PDF, CSV, and txt (plain text) documents. ABBYY is the best OCR programming Software I've worked with and that can assist you with changing over PDFs into editable text documents easily. My experience has been excellent with this, particularly while working with switching tables over completely to OCR content. The numerous accessible dialects and an enormous number of capabilities that permit us to perceive huge measures of text rapidly is outstanding. There is mix with dedicated famous cloud administrations. Cons Pricing:There are lot alternative options are available in the markets like Foxit PhantomPDF, Tesseract and Amazon Textract, Google Docs etc. Some of the alternative are relative very cheap/free compare to this. The pricing is little bit Costly in comparison with others options available in the markets.Accessibility:This software is Not accessible for Mobile phones. It can be improved in that respect to accessible in Android and IOS systems of all Mobile Phones.Conversion:Sometimes it converts the data in non-editable Box/image format or digitize the data in wrongly (errors of spelling) ,these mostly are doing when are not clearly recognizable or our main data sheet was in handwritten. User may faces difficulty at that times to works with this Software. Review Source WW William W. Owner Law Practice Used the software for: 2+ years ### "ABBYY FineReader Version 15 creates compact .pdfs with OCR support for east Asian languages" May 24, 2022 5.0 I have used ABBYY FineReader since 2008, through several versions. Pros I routinely use FineReader to re-tool documents sent by clients and other attorneys into compact, clear .pdfs with OCR. File sizes are typically one-tenth the size of the scanned file I received, and usually at least one-third the file size. FR can correct trapezoidal distortion and improve text qualities in other ways. The text editing tools work smartly and easily. I appreciate that FR will OCR files in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean and mixed with English. I can also easily create .pdfs from cell phone photos sent of documents, page by page. FR also converts .pdfs to Excel, Word, and PowerPoint formats. Cons I am very pleased with FR version 15, but it lacks the excellent bulk .pdf processing scripts that you can write in Adobe Acrobat; however, the FR .pdf files are typically more compact than the Acrobat files. I also liked version 12, but I was not pleased with the changes from version 12 to 14. I found verion 14 unreasonably difficult to use. Reason for choosing ABBYY FineReader PDF I have used Adobe Acrobat simultaneously with ABBYY FineReader since 2008. I choose FR when I need certain types of image processing, but especially for the smaller file sizes. I also choose FR to OCR documents with text in east Asian languages. I primarily use Adobe Acrobat for bulk OCR of scanned documents, its text redaction tool, and when Acrobat supports another plug-in tool that I want to use. Review Source Abhinav B. Graphics Artist Broadcast Media Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Abbyy Fine Reader : Simply excellent " February 19, 2023 5.0 I would like to give a golden crown to this product, Pros Wao , Abbyy is just the perfect software i Am looking since ages . And this product makes me a big fan of all time …. Such an excellent quality based outcome with little effort Cons Price could be little less , but it’s just ok as per quality Review Source GH Gerhard H. Controller Hospital & Health Care Used the software for: 2+ years ### "A program suite very suitable even for home office/tiny business" December 14, 2023 5.0 All together I'm well satisfied with this product, helping me in multilingual documentation! Pros The better OCR-functionality then competitors. Cons Of course the sense of ABBYY FineReader PDF is to create full access PDF documents with readable text. Maybe there COULD be a nice feature in adding additional pages to a scanned image with OR without previewing. Review Source Jelena U. Owner, CEO Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Powerfull tool for document archiving, document conversion, OCR and digitalization." May 17, 2018 5.0 If you need to work with documents, this is a great tool for recognition, digitalization and conversion. Price is high and it uses high resources on a computer. If you have a high volume of documents to work with, this is a great tool. Pros Abbyy FineReader support for almost all languages is impressive. We use many different languages, so it is very important for us to have a tool that can recognize well. It is easy to use, with the simplified interface, one can work fast, through materials. FineReader can export to different types which is also a great function. Convert document formats and make them searchable, from scanned documents, screenshots or images to pdfs and html. It is very good for creating new documents from multiple files, which can be imported in one project then exported to a new file. Cons The price is fairly high for those who don't have many documents. It crashes sometimes while scanning documents with older scanners or when given more demanding tasks, like automatic scan of multiple pages. If the scan is lower quality, or font is small, there are some mistakes that need to be fixed manualy, which can be time consuming. Review Source RS Ranmses S. Alumni Education Management Used the software for: 2+ years ### "ABBY is the greatest but needs to improve in some features." December 14, 2023 5.0 I really loved all the capabilities of ABBY. I strongly recommend it. Pros OCR, PDF, tools for editing and creating. Cons There's no dark mode, I still miss this feature. Review Source Halimatun Z. IT Manager Accounting Used the software for: 2+ years ### "The best for PDF editor" October 25, 2021 5.0 Pros ABBYY FineReader PDF has saves me countless hours of time of data entry. I can simply scanned the physical document and change the form to digital and running the OCR tools to make the text on the document editable. The OCR tools is the best i have tried and it can read the text perfectly even when the text is disoriented. Cons Some of the font can't be read by the software, especially for an Arabic font. It is also happen with a custom font and the software won't work well with this type of text. Other think that i hope they can improve is the licensing. The license is install on the computer, and it is not easy to transfer the license to other computer. Review Source LA Luis A. IT Manager Retail Used the software for: 2+ years ### "a Finreader User since Version 12" June 23, 2023 5.0 Pros Very easy to useIntuitiveSupport are very helpful and friendlyWide range of featuresEach version is better than the last Cons I don't like the subscription model and was sad to see it implemented. Review Source JH Jamie H. Translator Translation and Localization Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Great tool, well worth the expense" November 9, 2021 5.0 I would recommend ABBYY to anyone and I plan to always keep my license active. Pros I use ABBYY on a daily basis to perform OCR, edit PDFs, combine PDFs, etc. I don't think I could function without it! The OCR works pretty well and helps me estimate word counts on all my documents, and combining PDFs has become essential as well. Cons I was hesitant to spend the money upfront at first, but I can see now that it was completely worth it. Review Source Response from ABBYY Software House November 30, 2021 Thank you for sharing your feedback and for the great review. We are happy to hear about your positive experience. Subscribe to our blog for tips, trends, and use cases to boost your document productivity even more! https://pdf.abbyy.com/blog/ Alvaro M. Account Manager Utilities Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Scan, OCR, Edit!" July 17, 2018 5.0 Powerful OCR software for both PC and Mac! Works offline, and can do the job in batches hassle-free. Pros I've been using Abbyy Finereader for about a decade now (since I stumbled upon it with a friend who digitized a lot of his readings). Abbyy is a powerful OCR software! I say powerful, because it captures nearly everything you throw at it, JPG, PDF... and if you're lucky, even handwritten notes are captures (often as image, but sometimes as text too!). It allows to import directly to Microsoft word for text editing. It even mimics the original scanned document in terms of the page layout and text sizes. Very useful for digitizing your existing documents (which you do not have a digital copy of). Heck, you can even scan and OCR an entire book! (copyrights apply, of course). Another good thing for me.... I can use if offline! Modern OCR apps require you to go online (which I cannot always be given the nature of my work and travels). Cons Now there are many other alternatives to using ABBYY as an OCR software, and most come as a free service (e.g., Google, Dropbox). It is even made easier now due to the proliferation of mobile phones. Scan a document via mobile phone, then use the online services for OCR, all for free now. Review Source JP Juan P. Paralegal Alternative Dispute Resolution Used the software for: 2+ years ### "A must app for any professional" December 14, 2023 5.0 I really love the app. It is my favorite productivity app hands down. Pros It is a high quality productivity app. It has a lot of awesome features to process many different kind of file formats, especially PDFs. I have been using it since 2014, and it is my #1 productivity app. Cons As a Mac user, I would love the app to be compatible with AppleScript for automatization purposes. Previous verions of the software (FineReader OCR Pro), is compatible with AppleScript. Review Source Similar Products Featured ## Send me user reviews about this product ### Fill out the form and we'll send a list of the top-rated software based on real user reviews directly to your inbox.