
ABBYY FineReader PDF
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272 Reviews

- Industry: Accounting
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Extremely valuable tool in fostering automation for my small-sized accounting firm
Reviewed on 25/10/2018
For anyone in the finance industry, it is now simply understood that numbers are no longer "crunched" by overworked accountants battling customer-driven deadlines. That is all gone by way of automation. The only hang-up to a seamless input into automation is the fact that much of it still is stored as paper, believe it or not. My firm in particular made a push to start digitizing all of our records and in this process, I learned much about OCR technology. There are hundreds of products that say they can OCR, but the fact that ABBYY can process a HUGE variety of documents, fonts, etc. , this saves a lot of time correcting the output and actually getting searchable documents onto file storage. I just hope that this product continues to develop and remains at its reasonable price point.
Pros
It literally helped my firm save HUNDREDS of man-hours of data entry by running all of our scanned documents through ABBYY and relying heavily upon its OCR to produce a variety of formats which we were able to quickly cross verify and enter into the accounting software. In short, the quality and intelligence of their OCR engine is tremendously accurate and fast!
Cons
The licensing stuff is a little TOO strict and often the remote licensing procedure has to be manually restarted within WIndows Services. We eventually bought more licenses after realizing that ABBYY will be a critical component in my firm's efforts to digitize all of our records and hard copies onto our cloud-hosted server. However, for a very small business that may not warrant another license purchase, they will quickly find out that ABBYY is quick to detect multiple sessions of the same serial code and will block both out. A little excessive, but I can understand their strict use and protection of this fine product.
- Industry: Entertainment
- Company size: 2-10 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 5.0 /10
Great product
Reviewed on 23/12/2022
It does what we need
Pros
Fast, accurate. Okay support. I’d like to see pricing more customer friendly.
Cons
Subscription sucks , I favor purchasing.
- Industry: E-Learning
- Company size: 10,000+ Employees
- Used Monthly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 1.0 /10
It's fine - but nothing like PDF Element, Nitro for handling large files, OCR is ok
Reviewed on 29/6/2022
I liked the customer support for transferring my license from PC to Mac and back. Other than that, I only used it as an OCR engine until I found a better product. Can't draw (e.g. like in Notability), cross-platform is sub-par, the UI is not so easy. Other than OCR, I had no reason to use it.
Pros
OCR was useful for conversion (but the engine is a bit outdated)
Cons
The UI is non-intuitive, can't handle large PDFs (e.g. writing notes in a book), no collaboration, expensive for students - waste of money
- Industry: Hospital & Health Care
- Company size: 51-200 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10
Incredibly useful and easy to use!
Reviewed on 15/11/2022
Pros
My favorite feature was the way they made editing PDF's so simple!! It felt like a word document when I was editing my PDF documents and that just made the whole process so much easier!
Cons
I really wish they offered a one-time payment instead of just offering only yearly subscriptions which can add up overtime
- Industry: Computer Software
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Great value for your money
Reviewed on 28/12/2022
Pros
The accuracy of the OCR engine has been great in our use cases where we already have pdf files and we are using this software to convert them to searchable pdf files.
Cons
For our use case the only problem we encounter sometimes is the 5000 pages monthly limit when using the Hot Folder functionality. Some months we reach the limit and have to wait until the limit is reset. Still, it's a great price for the value it brings so it's a minor con for us.
- Industry: Translation & Localisation
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Best OCR Software in the world
Reviewed on 23/12/2022
indispensable need for translators and ofices in translation sector
Pros
OCR is routine job in Translation sector
Cons
There is notihg least about this software
- Industry: Publishing
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
FineReader Excellent for OCR
Reviewed on 23/12/2022
Experience overall is excellent. The only suggestion would be a better scan straightener which can be adjusted by the user--Right now we have to open the scans in Adobe Photoshop or Adobe InDesign to straighten.
Pros
Ease of set-up and use; accuracy of scan, management of scan images.
Cons
Can't remove background colors easily--have to open in Microsoft Word to do so.
- Industry: Libraries
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
ABBYY FineReader is great but lack of a Reader features.
Reviewed on 24/12/2022
In the matter of creating and editing PDFs I am really satisfied with ABBYY.
Pros
I love all of ABBYY: creating, editing and converting files and PDFs. The tools for OCR, scanning is priceless.
Cons
ABBYY it's called "FineReader" but it still lacks of features for reading such as dark theme/dark mode in order to help eye-damage while reading documents.
- Industry: Translation & Localisation
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Easy, yet powerful
Reviewed on 23/12/2022
Pros
It's really easy to use and the OCR is quite effective, any other OCR tool is this easy.
Cons
The output on Word can be improved, sometimes is a bit off.
- Industry: Computer Software
- Company size: 2-10 Employees
- Used Weekly for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10
Gets the job done
Reviewed on 27/12/2022
Will continue using it.
Pros
Easy to use. Ability to OCR a document to an excel spreadsheet.
Cons
Messes up excel table structure. Does not recognize numbers sometimes. Have to go back to verify manually.
- Industry: Law Practice
- Company size: 2-10 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Abbyy FineReader - Simply the best!
Reviewed on 13/10/2020
Excellent! Although I have Adobe on my laptop, I never use it anymore!
Pros
It's easy to use, and has all the features and functionality that I need. I like the user interface quite a bit. It's so user-friendly - not surprising with how intuitive the functionality is.
Cons
Actually, I can't think of a single thing I don't like, or like less, about this software. It's so user friendly, and such a great value for the price!
Response from ABBYY Software House
Dear Helen,
Thank you for sharing your positive experience of working with FineReader PDF.
Best Regards,
ABBYY FineReader Team
- Industry: Wholesale
- Company size: 2-10 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
ABBYY is my second favourite office software.
Reviewed on 9/11/2021
Pros
PDF to EXCEL converting,
Abby screenshot reader
Cons
I like everything. Abby screenshot reader shoud have some editing options.
Response from ABBYY Software House
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/
- Industry: Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing
- Company size: 51-200 Employees
- Used Monthly for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Best of the Best
Reviewed on 24/5/2022
There are many PDF files that have different way of aligning the Prices of their Catalogs. ABBYY was the closest vs others application to aligned them in a proper way and less editing. Saving us time and process.
Pros
Just how easy it is to convert PDF files to Excel.
Cons
We didn't have any issues. Everything was there what we normally need it.
Alternatives Considered
Adobe Acrobat ReaderReasons for Choosing ABBYY FineReader PDF
Just to convert a file from PDF to Excel it will put you in a waiting time and it was just time consuming and time is what we do not have.Reasons for Switching to ABBYY FineReader PDF
The reason is sometimes when converting from PDF to Excel, there are some files that have errors and after the converting it just doesn't look good and was missing a lot of good information. I remember I spend a whole day looking for the best PDF Converter. I tried about 10 different Free Trials and tested them on the PDF that I knew it had errors and wanted to see which one will do the best job to converted. So the winner was Abby vs the others. Extremely Happy with end results and is a big Help using it.- Industry: Law Practice
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
ABBYY FineReader Version 15 creates compact .pdfs with OCR support for east Asian languages
Reviewed on 24/5/2022
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.

- Industry: Retail
- Company size: 2-10 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
OCR that works!
Reviewed on 20/7/2019
Pros
ABBYY FineReader is a leader in OCR software and that means that their OCR is the best. It can perform character recognition in any language. I am amazed by all the functions that this piece of software has but one thing is so cool and I use it almost every day to help me organize papers in my office. That is "Hot Folder" - every time you add some document into the desired folder it automatically converts it for you into any type of document you want. It can be editable PDF, Word or any other combination you would ever want. It can do it!
Text is recognized very well and without any errors almost every time.
Cons
Sometimes it is struggling with some special letters from foreign languages like Cyrillic or some letters like čćšđž and many times I found that those are recognized wrong. Also, it tends to keep layout and formatting as the original document but sometimes it doesn't work well. Also, when you are trying to manually select area for the recognition it can be very hard and tiring to do all that manually because the software didn't recognize page properly. Most of the times that is not needed but when you are shooting or scanning in lower resolutions be prepared for that.
- Industry: Medical Practice
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Monthly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Excellent for translations and improved accuracy over the previous versions.
Reviewed on 26/5/2022
This was a tremendous help in translating a document written in a German typeface from the 1800s. I trained the software to read this archaic font and then was able to copy and paste the text of the document into an on line translator to find what it said. I am a long time user of Fine Reader 8 and the recent updates of the program had not been any more accurate than version 8 until this one, Version 15. I bought the newest version to obtain improved accuracy of character recognition and document formatting.
Pros
Its accuracy; it is an improvement over the previous version. I owned version 8 and would periodically try newer versions as they were offered, but the accuracy wasn't any better than that of version 8 despite what the advertising said. Version 15 was noticeably more accurate for the types of documents I OCR. I like that you can buy it as an owned program and not as a subscription. There's a music OCR program I like, but because it's a subscription, I won't buy it. I like having quick access to diacritical marks and symbols in this version.
Cons
I had been a user of version 8 for many years. The layout of the program was different and I still sometimes struggle to find a function that I want to do. I dislike having to double click on a page image on the left side to get it to display in the OCR windows. In version 8 I just had to click on the image once to change pages. I miss having the text name of functions written below icons. Verification should be just to the right of Recognize rather than on the far right. The flow is currently wrong: it should be recognize, verify, save.
- Industry: Construction
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Great Conversion Tool
Reviewed on 9/11/2021
works very well for our needs
Pros
The ability to combine documents from different programs into a single PDF
Cons
this could use a certified signature field or the ability to import a signature from a file
Alternatives Considered
Adobe Acrobat ReaderReasons for Choosing ABBYY FineReader PDF
Did not combine and convert documentsSwitched From
PDF CompleteReasons for Switching to ABBYY FineReader PDF
Works with my other programs for conversionsResponse from ABBYY Software House
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/
- Industry: Publishing
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Weekly for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Better than Adobe
Reviewed on 9/11/2021
as good, better in some cases, as Adobe at a reasonable cost.
Pros
it is very easy to use. It is also full of useful features which are much simpler to use than Adobe. I cannot think of one thing that Adobe can do better, although i do not use some of the more collaborative features. It is stable, does a great job of creating and editing PDF and does the same thing Adobe does for a lot less money.
Cons
I wish there was something to say here, but i really have no issue or problems with what i use this for
Response from ABBYY Software House
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/
- Industry: Building Materials
- Company size: 201-500 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10
Cool recognizes text, functional develops
Reviewed on 9/10/2018
Pros
Our company is quite modern, but many customers and customers still work according to the old scheme: they create a document, print it out and bring it to us. They are so comfortable, and we have to transfer everything back to the computer. Manually, of course, we do not do this, but use FineReader. It does an excellent job with the conversion, but errors sometimes happen, especially with regard to the recognition of special characters. In general, I like everything.
Cons
The 14th version of the program does not work correctly: the automatic brightness adjustment broke, the document opens on the second attempt, the contrast change function disappears. Hope this is fixed.
- Industry: Computer Software
- Company size: 501-1,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
I've tried different recognition programs, but Fine Reader is the best!
Reviewed on 13/8/2018
Pros
I have been using Fine Reader ever since the 4 version appeared on sale and is very pleased with the result of the work. For example, if earlier only the text of excellent quality was suitable for recognition, now the photo from the phone is quite suitable for the program. I, for example, so easily recognize the preliminary contracts that customers bring. I just take pictures of them on my phone, transfer them to a computer and then easily process the document as I need.
Cons
Some characters, often found in my documents, Fine Reader has never learned to recognize. I have to insert such symbols in manual mode, which takes a lot of time.

- Industry: Information Technology & Services
- Company size: 51-200 Employees
- Used for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10
One of the best OCR softwares
Reviewed on 31/10/2020
FineReadear is still one of the best OCR softwares out there and I've been using it for the last 15 years. But I have to admit that there are more and more free solutions out there which offer similar functionalities.
Pros
One of the oldest and best OCR softwares
Cons
There are some free solutions which offer similar functionalities.
Response from ABBYY Software House
Dear Kristina,
Thank you for sharing your positive experience of working with our product. With more than 20 years of experience, FineReader's AI-based OCR technology is a leader in the industry. While it is true that there is an increasing number of free solutions entering the market, the exceptional quality of OCR conversion achieved using FineReader cannot be matched with a free solution. Most (if not all) free solutions offer very poor OCR quality, with limited functionality (lacking support of all types of PDFs for example) and limited size of documents for processing. Free solutions also often require additional plugins and tend to be quite unreliable (no warranty, no professional support available).
While a free version might be O.K for a quick, one time conversion, for effective and long-term work with documents, a full professional version is needed.
Best Regards,
ABBYY FineReader Team

- Industry: Information Technology & Services
- Company size: 10,000+ Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Abbyy OCR - Amazing
Reviewed on 3/5/2022
Overall experience has been amazing. It is one of the best OCRs in the market, better than tesseract and MODI
Pros
The OCR capability is amazing, works pretty well.
Cons
Not so easy to use, doesn't work well with handwritten documents
- Industry: Computer Software
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Weekly for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10
simple software that makes everyday work easy!
Reviewed on 30/7/2022
It's great and worth the money. I wish I found this tool earlier. As a software engineer it's great to have a tool which can handle all the basic document editing functionalities. It also helps in managing all documents in one place.
Pros
My favourite features include the electronic signature, merge, and compression tools. Adding signatures to documents is very simple and intuitive, and the signatures look realistic and neat. Since I don't have to physically sign and scan the paperwork, this makes my job as a software engineer easier. Additionally, a lot of websites need papers of a specific size, and sending smaller documents is often simpler. For that, the compression tool is fairly helpful. Additionally, I can use the merging tool to reorganise the contents if necessary after combining numerous documents into a single PDF. I also like the OCR tool.
Cons
I don't have any major complaints about this software. The only minor issue is that sometimes it doesn't recognise characters correctly in scanned documents. But since it's mostly accurate it's manageable.
- Industry: Human Resources
- Company size: 51-200 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
An indispensable program for my work
Reviewed on 13/10/2018
Pros
A significant part of my work is office routine - working with documents, processing files of candidates for a particular position. FineReader is helping me out with text recognition. I do not know what to do without it. It saves a lot of time, while the finished text almost does not have to edit.
Cons
The program consumes a lot of resources. Because of this, I did not immediately understand why my computer began to work more slowly. Partially solved the problem like this: disabled autoload with Windows.

- Industry: Utilities
- Company size: 1,001-5,000 Employees
- Used Monthly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Must have for the digital transformation
Reviewed on 29/3/2019
Pros
In our efforts since last year to move into a fully digital (paperless) office, we found that we're still far off. We still have several manual business processes that involve passing around physical paper/forms.
Then we found Abby Finereader. We are using this software to scan our documents and convert some of them into a searchable PDF or the ability to use OCR technology to be able to edit the scanned documents in MS Word or Google Docs (ready for cut&paste etc).
Much help also is the feature which allows us to automate our doc conversions via what is called a 'Hot Folder' This allows for scheduled and batch jobs. So just set it up, let it run while you do other things, then come back to a finished job.
Lastly, I love the fact that Abby Finereader now has a client for Android use. Now we can do our work on the go, and send it direct via email or save to the cloud. Very useful for meetings and workshops outside the office.
Cons
To be honest, I have no gripes with Abbyy. I've been using it for a long time now and it has really improved a lot (with more features) over the years.