Text Extraction vs. OCR: When You Need Which
Use text extraction when your PDF already contains real, selectable text — it's faster and always accurate, since it's pulling out exact existing text rather than interpreting an image; use OCR only when your document is a scanned image with no underlying text at all, since OCR is slower and can introduce recognition errors on unclear characters, fonts, or handwriting that a direct text extraction would never have in the first place.
Choosing the right process for the specific document avoids both wasted time and, in OCR's case, a result with avoidable errors.
Why extraction is always preferable when it's available
As covered in the what-actually-happens guide, text extraction just reads existing text objects, so there's no interpretation involved and no risk of misreading a character — if your PDF has real selectable text, there's no reason to run it through OCR, which is slower and introduces a real chance of error that extraction simply doesn't have.
When OCR is the only option
As covered in the scanned-PDF guide, a photographed or scanned document has no extractable text at all, making OCR the only path to editable text — accepting that OCR accuracy depends heavily on scan quality, font clarity, and how standard the text layout is.