Encyclopedia
Comparison of optical character recognition software
This comparison of optical character recognition software includes:
- OCR engines, that do the actual character identification
- Layout analysis software, that divide scanned documents into zones suitable for OCR
- Graphical interfaces to one or more OCR engines
- Software development kits that are used to add OCR capabilities to other software (e.g. forms processing applications, document imaging management systems, e-discovery systems, records management solutions)
| Name | Founded year | Latest stable version |
Latest release year |
License | Online | Windows | Mac OS X | Linux | BSD | Android | iOS | Programming language | SDK? | Languages | Fonts | Output formats | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ABBYY FineReader | 1989 | 16 | 2023 | Proprietary | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | C/C++ | Yes | 198 | All fonts | DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPTX, RTF, PDF, HTML, CSV, TXT, ODT, DjVu, EPUB, FB2 | ABBYY also supplies SDKs for embedded and mobile devices. Professional, Corporate and Site License Editions for Windows, Express Edition for Mac. |
| AIDA | 2016 | 13.0 | 2024 | Proprietary | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | All languages using Latin alphabet | Machine and handprinted text, Latin alphabet | DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, TXT, CSV, PDF, JSON, XML | AIDA is able to learn how to extract any value from any document, with a single click on a single document. | |
| AnyDoc Software | 1989 | ? | ? | Proprietary | No | Yes | No | No | No | ? | ? | VBScript | ? | ? | ? | Works with structured, semi-structured, and unstructured documents. | |
| Asprise OCR SDK | 1998 | 15 | 2015 | Proprietary | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | Java, C#, VB.NET, C/C++/Delphi | Yes | 20+ | ? | Plain text, searchable PDF, XML | Java, C#, VB.NET, C/C++/Delphi SDKs for OCR and Barcode recognition on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Unix. |
| CuneiForm | 1996 | 1.1 | 2011 | BSD variant | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | C/C++ | Yes | 28 | Any printed font | HTML, hOCR, native, RTF, TeX, TXT | Enterprise-class system, can save text formatting and recognizes complicated tables of any structure |
| E-aksharayan | 2010 | Yes | No | Yes | No | ? | ? | 14 | RTF, TXT, BRL | ||||||||
| GOCR | 2000 | 0.52 | 2018 | GPL | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | C | ? | 20+ | ? | ||
| Google Drive OCR or Google Cloud Vision | 2015 | Proprietary | Yes | Browser | Browser | Browser | Unknown | ? | ? | Unknown | Yes | 200+ | All fonts | text | Google blog post | ||
| Microsoft Office Document Imaging | ? | Office 2007 | 2007 | Proprietary | No | Yes | No | No | No | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | Uses OmniPage | |
| Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 | 2011 | ? | 2007 | Proprietary | No | Yes | No | No | No | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ||
| OCRFeeder | 2009-03 | 0.8.5 | 2022 | GPL | No | No | No | Yes | No | ? | ? | Python | ? | ? | ? | Features a full user interface and has a command-line tool for automatic operations. Has its own segmentation algorithm but uses system-wide OCR engines like Tesseract or Ocrad | |
| Ocrad | ? | 0.29 | 2024 | GPL | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | C++ | Yes | Latin alphabet | ? | Command line | |
| OCRopus | 2007 | 1.3.3 | 2017 | Apache | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | Python | ? | All languages using Latin script (other languages can be trained) | Normal Latin script and Fraktur (other scripts can be trained) | TXT, hOCR, | Pluggable framework under active development, used for Google Books |
| OmniPage | 1970s | 19.2 | 2015 | Proprietary | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | ? | ? | C/C++, C# | Yes | 125 | Machine and handprinted fonts | DOC/DOCX XLS/XLSX PPTX RTF PDF PDF/A Searchable PDF HTML Text XML ePUB MP3 | Product of Nuance Communications |
| Puma.NET | ? | ? | 2009 | BSD | No | Yes | No | No | No | ? | ? | C# | Yes | 28 | Any printed font | .NET OCR SDK based on Cognitive Technologies' CuneiForm recognition engine. Wraps Puma COM server and provides simplified API for .NET applications | |
| ReadSoft | ? | ? | 14? | Proprietary | No | Yes | No | No | No | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | Scan, capture and classify business documents such as invoices, forms and purchase orders integrated with business processes. | |
| Scantron | ? | ? | ? | Proprietary | No | Yes | No | No | No | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | For working with localized interfaces, corresponding language support is required. | |
| SmartScore | 1991 | 10.5.8 | 2015 | Proprietary | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | For musical scores | |
| Tesseract | 1985 | 5.5.0 | 2024 | Apache | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | C++, C | Yes | 100+ | Any printed font | Text, ALTO, hOCR, PAGE, PDF, others with different user interfaces or the API | Developed at HP Labs (1985-1995) and Google (2006-2018 |
| Name | Founded year | Latest stable version |
Latest release year |
License | Online | Windows | Mac OS X | Linux | BSD | Android | iOS | Programming language | SDK? | Languages | Fonts | Output formats | Notes |
01Evaluation
A 2016 analysis of the accuracy and reliability of the OCR packages Google Docs OCR, Tesseract, ABBYY FineReader, and Transym, employing a dataset including 1227 images from 15 different categories concluded Google Docs OCR and ABBYY to be performing better than others.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Comparison of optical character recognition software”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Fathomly is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Wikimedia Foundation. Spotted a problem? Tell us.