OCRFeeder vs Surya
OCRFeeder
wiki.gnome.orgSurya
github.comSide by side
| Figure | OCRFeeder | Surya |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $400/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 3 |
| Spec score · OCR software | 8.6 (#8) | 8.7 (#6) |
| Supported inputs | both | both |
| Interfaces | OCRFeeder provides graphical and command-line interfaces. | The project provides a Python package, command-line tools, and an interactive Streamlit app for images and PDFs. |
| License | The README says OCRFeeder is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or, at the user's option, any later version. | The Surya code is Apache 2.0, while the model weights use a modified AI Pubs Open Rail-M license with commercial-use conditions described in the README. |
| Limitations | The project roadmap lists plain-text export and Undo/Redo support as items to add. | Surya is specialized for document OCR rather than photos or natural scenes, and layout, OCR, and table recognition require a running inference backend. |
| Output | It generates multiple formats, with ODT as its main format. | Surya 2 returns page content as structured blocks with HTML, polygons, bounding boxes, confidence, and reading order. |
| Primary platform | desktop | desktop |
| Purpose | OCRFeeder is a document layout analysis and optical character recognition system. | Surya is a 650M-parameter OCR model for text recognition, layout analysis, reading order, and table recognition. |
| Support | The project page links to a GitLab issue tracker. | Datalab lists community support on Free, email and Slack support on Team, and dedicated support on Enterprise. |
Plans
In their own words
OCRFeeder
OCRFeeder is a Linux system for analyzing document layouts and recognizing text in images. It automatically outlines image content, separates graphics from text, and applies OCR to text regions. Its GTK graphical interface lets users correct recognition errors and bounding boxes, set paragraph styles, and clean input images. Users can import PDFs and save or load projects. The application exports to multiple formats, with ODT as its main format, and provides both a graphical interface and a command-line interface. It works with system-wide OCR engines, including command-line OCR engines. Documentation for the graphical interface is available from its Help menu or with F1. OCRFeeder is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or any later version chosen by the user. The GNOME project page links to source code and release packages, and the project page links to a GitLab issue tracker. Its listed roadmap includes proposed additions such as plain-text export and undo/redo support. The README states that the software is provided without warranty.
Surya
Surya is a 650M-parameter OCR model for extracting text and analyzing document structure. It handles layout, reading order and tables, and supports OCR in 91 languages. Surya 2 returns page content as structured blocks that can include HTML, polygons, bounding boxes, confidence values and reading order. Table recognition can provide row and column geometry; full mode can also return HTML with spanning cells and header rows. Equations found in page OCR are represented as KaTeX-compatible LaTeX within math tags. Users can work with a Python package, command-line tools or an interactive Streamlit app for images and PDFs. Layout, OCR and table recognition require an inference backend: vLLM on NVIDIA GPUs or llama.cpp on CPU and Apple Silicon, or a connection to an existing server. Surya is free and open source. The code uses Apache 2.0, while the model weights have a separate modified AI Pubs Open Rail-M license with commercial-use conditions. It is specialized for documents, not photos or natural scenes.