Best OCR API (Updated List Comparison)

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a technology that allows computers to convert printed or handwritten text in images or scanned documents into digital text that can be edited, searched, or analyzed. OCR APIs provide developers with pre-built software components that enable them to integrate OCR functionality into their applications without having to build it from scratch. OCR APIs have become increasingly popular due to their ease of use, accuracy, and support for multiple languages. In this era of digitalization, OCR APIs are essential for businesses and organizations that need to process large amounts of data from physical documents. In this context, selecting the best OCR API can be a daunting task. This is because there are several OCR APIs available in the market, each with its own unique features, strengths, and weaknesses.

In this article, we will explore some of the best OCR APIs available in 2023, their features, and how they can be used to enhance your business processes.

1. OCR.Space

OCR.space is an OCR API that provides accurate and reliable Optical Character Recognition (OCR) services for businesses and organizations that need to extract text from images or scanned documents. It supports more than 100 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, making it a popular choice for businesses with a global reach. OCR.space also offers handwriting recognition, image analysis features, and automatic data extraction capabilities that make it easier for businesses to process large amounts of data quickly and accurately.

1.1. Features

One of the standout features of OCR.space is its accuracy, which is achieved through the use of advanced OCR algorithms that can recognize even complex text formats and layouts. OCR.space also offers a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to upload and process images or documents, and it provides detailed OCR results that include the recognized text, the confidence level of each character, and the location of each word on the image.

1.2. Licensing and Pricing

OCR.Space offers a range of pricing options to suit different business needs, including a free plan that allows for up to 25,000 OCR requests per month, and paid plans that offer additional features such as faster processing times, higher accuracy, and dedicated support. The API is also easy to integrate with different programming languages and platforms, including Python, Java, and .NET.

2. Rossum.AI

Rossum.AI is an OCR API that provides highly accurate document processing and data extraction capabilities. Founded in 2017, Rossum.AI is a Czech Republic-based company that has gained popularity due to its advanced OCR technology that utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms.

2.1. Features

The Rossum.AI API is designed to automate and streamline document processing, making it ideal for businesses and organizations that handle large volumes of documents on a daily basis. The API provides highly accurate OCR capabilities that can read text from a wide range of documents, including invoices, receipts, purchase orders, and other structured and unstructured documents.

One of the key features of Rossum.AI is its ability to handle complex document layouts and varying fonts with ease. Its advanced algorithms can detect tables, columns, and other structural elements in a document, making it easier to extract data accurately. Additionally, the Rossum.AI OCR engine can read handwritten text, which is a significant advantage over other OCR APIs that do not offer this feature.

2.2. Summary

Rossum.AI is an advanced OCR API that provides highly accurate document processing and data extraction capabilities. Its ability to handle complex document layouts, read handwriting, and learn from user feedback makes it an excellent choice for businesses and organizations that require reliable, automated document processing.

3. Amazon Textract

Amazon Textract is a powerful OCR API developed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that can extract text and data from various document types, including tables and forms, with high accuracy. Textract uses advanced machine learning algorithms to recognize and extract text, tables, and data from images and PDF documents, and returns the extracted information in a structured format. This makes it easier for businesses to automate document processing, reduce manual labor, and improve operational efficiency.

3.1. Features

One of the key advantages of Amazon Textract is its support for various document types, including scanned documents, PDFs, and images. It can extract information from forms and tables, and even identify key-value pairs from structured documents. Moreover, Textract is designed to scale horizontally, which means that it can handle large volumes of documents with ease.

3.2. Licensing and Pricing

In terms of licensing and pricing, Amazon Textract is available on a pay-per-use basis. AWS offers a free tier that includes 1,000 pages of text extraction per month. Beyond that, pricing is based on the number of pages processed per month. The pricing is tiered, which means that the more pages you process, the lower the cost per page. There are also additional charges for other services such as data storage, data transfer, and API requests.

4. IronOCR

IronOCR is a powerful OCR API designed for .NET developers, offering a complete OCR SDK and lightweight OCR solutions. It enables developers to add OCR functionality easily to their .NET applications, allowing them to extract text from images and PDF documents. IronOCR is known for its high accuracy, speed, and support for multiple languages, making it a popular choice among developers and businesses. IronOCR plays a vital role in digitizing PDF documents, historical documents, and recognizing documents.

4.1. Features

IronOCR offers a range of advanced features, including support for barcode scanning, image pre-processing, data entry, digitizing printed data, manual data entry, data processing, and image resizing. It also includes features for handling different font styles, layouts, and image quality issues, making it a versatile and reliable OCR solution. Additionally, IronOCR facilitates automated data processing, eliminating the need for manual data processing.

4.2. Licensing and Pricing

IronOCR is available under a commercial license, which requires a one-time payment. The pricing for the commercial license varies depending on the number of developers who will be using the API and the type of deployment (cloud or on-premise). IronOCR also offers a free trial version that allows developers to test the API's features and functionality before making a purchase.

4.3. Code Example

IronOCR can easily perform OCR functionalities with just few lines of code. See the following example of extracting data from input data.

using IronOCR;
var Result = new IronTesseract().Read(@"\Screenshot.png");
Console.WriteLine(Result.Text);

using IronOCR;
var Result = new IronTesseract().Read(@"\Screenshot.png");
Console.WriteLine(Result.Text);

Imports IronOCR
Private Result = (New IronTesseract()).Read("\Screenshot.png")
Console.WriteLine(Result.Text)

OUTPUT

> IronOCR Simple Example: In this example we will test the accuracy of our C# OCR library to read text from a PNG Image.
>
> This is a very basic test, but things will get more complicated as the tutorial continues. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

5. Summary

OCR Recognition APIs have become an essential tool for businesses and organizations that need to process large amounts of data captured from physical documents. There are several OCR APIs available in the market, each with its own unique features, strengths, and weaknesses. Some of the best OCR APIs available in 2023 include OCR.Space, Rossum.AI, Amazon Textract, and IronOCR. OCR.Space offers accurate and reliable OCR services for businesses and organizations, while Rossum.AI provides highly accurate document processing and data extraction capabilities. Amazon Textract uses advanced machine learning algorithms to recognize and extract text and data from various document types, and IronOCR is a powerful OCR API that is designed for .NET developers. By comparing all these IronOCR is a solid choice for OCR Software that provides a simple OCR SDK and OCR engines. For more detailed tutorials please visit the following link.

The software product can be downloaded from this link.