Old handwriting
Read old handwriting
Upload an old letter or record and get a first draft of the text.
Drop pages or folders here
Upload up to 10 pages in one document with your free allowance. Folders and large collections open the batch organizer.
4.6 out of 5 on Google Play.
135 ratings · 32 written reviews · Play snapshot checked 30 August 2026
Nearly 99,000 completed production OCR pages · Production sessions recorded across 144 countries · Usage snapshot October 1, 2026. How these figures are counted
A first draft in seconds, not in an evening.
Old writing, faded ink and short forms of words make this slow work. Inksight gives you a draft of the whole page. You correct it instead of typing it.
Letters and diaries
Old letters, travel diaries and journals from a family or an archive.
Records and registers
Church books, census pages, ledgers and wills, where the names and dates matter most.
Archive scans
Grey scans, photos of single pages and PDFs with many pages.
OCR that ends in a document.
The original stays visible while you review the result. Nothing is hidden behind a download until you know the page was understood.
| Capability | Inksight | Basic OCR |
|---|---|---|
| Faded ink | Read from the scan as it is | Usually needs photo editing first |
| Page layout | Keeps columns and separate entries apart | Mixes everything into one text |
| Checking | Your page is shown next to every line | Only the result |
| File types | Word, PDF, Excel and text | Plain text |
Handwriting recognition across 50+ languages.
Scan Latin-script notes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and more, as well as Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other supported scripts. Language is detected from the page—there is no selector to configure first.
Recognition quality varies with handwriting, image clarity, page angle, and document structure. Review important names and numbers before using an export.
Before you scan a page.
Can AI read old handwriting?
It can give you a useful first draft. How good it is depends on the writing, the ink and the state of the page. A clear letter from the 1800s usually comes out well. A very old hand full of short forms needs real correction. Treat the result as a draft to check.
Which old documents work best?
Clear writing from about 1800 on, scanned or photographed at a good size, with the whole page in the picture and no shadow across the writing.
Does it keep old spelling?
Yes. It writes what is on the page and does not modernise it. Short forms and small raised letters cause the most errors, so check those against the scan.
Can I upload a PDF from an archive?
Yes. Upload the PDF, put the pages in the right order, and save the whole document at once.
Should I trust the names and dates?
Not without checking. A name has nothing around it to help the model, so names, places and dates are the weakest part of any result. Your page stays next to the text so you can check each one.
Is it free?
Your first ten pages on the web are free, exports included. After that Inksight still reads the page and shows you a locked preview, so you can see the result before you pick a plan.
Other ways to use Inksight.
Every tool uses the same OCR and the same document library, so a page you scan here opens anywhere else you sign in.
Also worth a look: how Inksight compares with other OCR models, pricing and the Android app.