OCRmyPDF vs WatchOCR
OCRmyPDF
ocrmypdf.readthedocs.ioWatchOCR
watchocr.comSide by side
| Figure | OCRmyPDF | WatchOCR |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · OCR software | 8.5 (#10) | 7.6 (#30) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Supported inputs | both | |
| Primary platform | desktop | both |
| Purpose | OCRmyPDF adds a searchable text layer to scanned PDF files while preserving the original PDF as much as possible. | WatchOCR is a free OCR server for PDFs that converts image only PDFs and TIFFs into text searchable PDFs. |
| Searchable PDF | Yes | Yes |
Plans
In their own words
OCRmyPDF
OCRmyPDF is free software that adds searchable text to scanned PDF files while retaining the original PDF as much as possible. It uses Tesseract to recognize text in page images and produces PDF/A-2b by default, with regular PDF output available as an alternative. Image-processing options such as deskew can adjust pages to support visual quality and OCR accuracy. When a PDF already contains text, its processing modes can stop with an error, skip affected pages, redo OCR, or force OCR across all pages. OCRmyPDF can also be used as a Python library, and plugins can customize processing steps. Installation methods are documented for Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD, and Docker; Paperless-ngx and Nextcloud OCR are named as third-party integrations. Results may be poor for low-quality scans or languages not specified for processing, and handwriting is not recognized. The project also notes that accuracy may trail commercial solutions. Its documentation advises processing only PDFs users trust and warns that its example Docker web service has no security measures and is not meant for public internet deployment.