Comparison of optical character recognition software

This comparison of optical character recognition software includes:

Name
Founded year
Latest
stable version
Latest
release year
 License
Online
 Windows Mac OS X Linux BSD
Android
iOS
 Programming language Languages Fonts Output formats Notes
ABBYY FineReader1989162023ProprietaryYesYesYesNoYes Yes YesC/C++Yes198
All fontsDOC, 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 Software1989??ProprietaryNoYesNoNoNo ? ?VBScript???Works with structured, semi-structured, and unstructured documents.
Asprise OCR SDK1998152015ProprietaryYesYesYesYesYes ? ?Java, C#, VB.NET, C/C++/DelphiYes20+
?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.
CuneiForm19961.12011BSD variantNoYesYesYesYes ? ?C/C++Yes28Any printed fontHTML, 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
GOCR20000.52
2018GPLYes
YesYesYesYes ? ?C?20+?
Google Drive OCR or Google Cloud Vision2015ProprietaryYesBrowserBrowserBrowserUnknown ? ?UnknownYes200+All fontstextGoogle blog post

Microsoft Office Document Imaging?Office 20072007ProprietaryNoYesNoNoNo ? ?????Uses OmniPage[citation needed]
Microsoft Office OneNote 20072011?2007ProprietaryNoYesNoNoNo ? ?????
OCRFeeder2009-030.8.52022GPLNoNoNoYesNo ? ?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
2024GPLYesNoYesYesYes ? ?C++YesLatin alphabet?Command line
OCRopus20071.3.32017ApacheNoNoYesYesYes ? ?Python?All languages using Latin script (other languages can be trained)Normal Latin script and Fraktur (other scripts can be trained)TXT, hOCR,
PDF
Pluggable framework under active development, used for Google Books
OmniPage1970s19.22015ProprietaryYesYesYesYesNo ? ?C/C++, C#
Yes125
Machine and handprinted fontsDOC/DOCX XLS/XLSX PPTX RTF PDF PDF/A Searchable PDF HTML Text XML ePUB MP3Product of Nuance Communications
Puma.NET??2009BSDNoYesNoNoNo ? ?C#Yes28Any 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?ProprietaryNoYesNoNoNo ? ?????Scan, capture and classify business documents such as invoices, forms and purchase orders integrated with business processes.
Scantron???ProprietaryNoYesNoNoNo ? ?????For working with localized interfaces, corresponding language support is required.
SmartScore199110.5.82015ProprietaryNoYesYesNoNo ? ?????For musical scores
Tesseract19855.5.02024ApacheNoYesYesYesYes ? ?C++, CYes100+
Any printed fontText, 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

Evaluation

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.

References

  1. ↑ "ABBYY FineReader 14: Technical Specifications". Finereader.abbyy.com. Retrieved 2017-02-23.
  2. ↑ "ABBYY FineReader 11: Technical Specifications". Finereader.abbyy.com. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
  3. ↑ "Top OCR Software". Ocrworld.com. 2010-03-30. Archived from the original on 2017-02-23. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
  4. ↑ "AIDA". TCLAB. 2024-12-03. Retrieved 2024-12-03.
  5. ↑ "Asprise OCR SDK Features". asprise.com. Retrieved 2014-06-21.
  6. ↑ "Asprise Java OCR Library Features". asprise.com. Retrieved 2014-06-21.
  7. ↑ "Asprise Java, C#/VB.NET OCR API". asprise.com. 2015-11-19. Retrieved 2015-11-19.
  8. ↑ Debian manual page for Cuneiform for Linux version 1.1.0
  9. ↑ "GOCR Homepage". wasd.urz.uni-magdeburg.de. Retrieved 2018-10-17.
  10. ↑ "GOCR". Jocr.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
  11. ↑ "Supported languages". Feb 11, 2022.
  12. ↑ Ashok Popat (Sep 4, 2015). "IEEE SPS: Optical Character Recognition for Most of the World's Languages". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2021-12-20.
  13. ↑ Diaz, Antonio (2024-01-20). "GNU Ocrad 0.29 released" (Mailing list). info-gnu.
  14. ↑ OCRopus includes the ocropus-hocr tool which produces hOCR from the recognition results.
  15. ↑ In combination with the hocr-tools
  16. ↑ "OmniPage CSDK - OCR Document Capture Toolkit | Document Imaging & OCR". Nuance. Archived from the original on 2010-08-24. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
  17. ↑ "OmniPage Standard Document Conversion". Nuance. Archived from the original on 2014-03-13. Retrieved 2014-02-25.
  18. ↑ Based on count of language training files for version 3.04. Available at the download page.
  19. ↑ Usage explained in the Tesseract Readme and FAQ
  20. ↑ Such as ODF with OCRFeeder
  21. ↑ "GitHub - tesseract-ocr/tesseract: Tesseract Open Source OCR Engine (main repository)". GitHub. Retrieved 2025-03-21.
  22. ↑ Assefi, Mehdi (2016-12-01). "OCR as a Service: An Experimental Evaluation of Google Docs OCR, Tesseract, ABBYY FineReader, and Transym". ResearchGate. Retrieved 2019-01-31.