OnlineOCR vs Tesseract OCR
OnlineOCR
onlineocr.netTesseract OCR
github.comSide by side
| Figure | OnlineOCR | Tesseract OCR |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $9.95/mo | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 1 |
| Spec score · OCR software | 8.1 (#18) | 9.1 (#2) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Input formats | Supported inputs include PDF, TIFF, JPEG, BMP, PCX, PNG, GIF, and ZIP archives containing those formats. | The project lists PNG, JPEG, and TIFF among its supported image formats. |
| Supported inputs | both | image |
| Output formats | The service lists PDF, Word, Excel, RTF, and plain text as output formats. | Supported output formats include plain text, hOCR, PDF, invisible-text-only PDF, TSV, ALTO, and PAGE. |
| Primary platform | web | desktop |
| Searchable PDF | Yes | Yes |
Plans
OnlineOCR
- Weekly Plan$9.95 a month
- Monthly Plan$29.95 a month
- Lifetime$79.95 a month
- Lifetime$79.95, paid once
In their own words
Tesseract OCR
Tesseract OCR is a free, open-source OCR engine and command-line program for extracting printed text from images. It accepts image inputs including PNG, JPEG, and TIFF, and can output plain text, hOCR, PDF, TSV, ALTO, and PAGE formats. PDF options include searchable PDFs and invisible-text-only PDFs. Tesseract 4 and later include an LSTM-based engine focused on line recognition, while Legacy OCR Engine mode retains compatibility with Tesseract 3. The project says it recognizes more than 100 languages out of the box; language data is installed separately from the engine. Developers can build applications with the C or C++ libtesseract API, and the documentation lists wrappers for other languages. The repository code uses the Apache License 2.0. Tesseract does not include a graphical user interface and points users to third-party interfaces. It uses Leptonica to open images, and improving input image quality may be needed for better recognition results. Installation instructions cover Linux, macOS, and Windows, with listed platforms also including Android and self-hosting.