Stop feeding your AI at image prices
Every time you paste a screenshot into ChatGPT or Claude, you pay image-token prices for it — and the AI often misreads the text inside. Paste the screenshot here first and get clean Markdown text your AI reads for a fraction of the tokens.
Why screenshots are the expensive way to talk to AI
A screenshot feels quick, but for the AI it's the costly path — especially when you do it dozens of times a day debugging or asking questions:
- An image is billed as vision tokens — commonly several times the cost of the same words sent as plain text.
- You can't see how many tokens an image will burn before you send it, so the bill is unpredictable.
- AI regularly misreads characters inside an image — 0 vs O, l vs 1, spaced-out CJK — and then answers confidently from the wrong text.
- Every debugging screenshot repeats this. Paste 30 a day and the token cost adds up fast.
The fix: turn the screenshot into text first
Paste your screenshot here (Ctrl/⌘+V) or drop the image. LessTokens reads it with self-hosted OCR and gives you back clean, structured Markdown — the actual text, ready to paste into any AI. No account, and your image is deleted within 60 minutes.
Drop a document — or paste a screenshot
PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, HTML, CSV/TSV, TXT, or a screenshot (PNG/JPG — paste with Ctrl/⌘+V) · up to 20 MB
Have a PDF, Word or Excel file instead? Use the universal converter →
What you get
- Clean Markdown text your AI reads as text — cheaper and predictable, not billed as an image.
- Spaced-out CJK is repaired and the reading order is kept, so the AI isn't misled by image artifacts.
- Self-hosted OCR — your screenshot is never sent to a paid third-party AI API.
- Free, no sign-up, deleted within 60 minutes, and never used to train AI.
What this does and doesn't promise
We don't claim every image is cheaper — a tiny icon might not be. But for text-heavy screenshots (error logs, docs, chats, code), the extracted text is usually far fewer tokens and far more accurate than the image. It needs readable text: blurry photos or handwriting may not extract, and when the text can't be read the tool tells you honestly instead of inventing content. Free screenshot conversions are rate-limited to keep the service abuse-proof and free.
Questions
Does converting a screenshot to text really use fewer tokens?
For text-heavy screenshots, almost always. A screenshot is billed as vision tokens — often several times the cost of the same words as plain text — so extracting the text and pasting that instead is usually much cheaper, and the AI reads it more reliably. For a tiny image with little text the difference is small.
Is my screenshot private?
Yes. Screenshots are read with self-hosted OCR, never sent to a paid third-party AI API, never used to train AI, and automatically deleted within 60 minutes. See the privacy policy for the full detail.
What screenshots does it work on?
Screenshots with readable printed text — error messages, documentation, chat logs, code, tables — in English or Traditional Chinese. Blurry images and handwriting may not extract; when the text can't be read, the tool says so instead of returning made-up output.
File retention
Uploaded originals and conversion results are temporary. They are not kept as a permanent document library.
- Uploaded originals are used only to produce your Markdown result and are deleted as soon as processing ends, or within 60 minutes at the latest.
- Conversion results and job records are available for up to 60 minutes, then expire and are automatically removed from the active database.
- We do not keep a permanent document library. Limited provider-managed infrastructure snapshots may retain residual copies for up to 5 days before automatic expiry.
- Uploaded originals are held in temporary local storage only while the job is processed. Recurring cleanup removes any expired temporary upload left by an interruption.