Open-Capture vs Tesseract OCR

Open-Capture collects documents, extracts information with OCR and AI, and exports results to third-party management software. It accepts material from scanners, copiers, file drops, email and attachments, web forms, uploads, and web services. Extraction options include Tesseract OCR, pre-trained models, machine-learning classification, key-value extraction, reference-data matching, dictionaries, and barcode or QR-code reading. Extracted fields can be checked against rules, formats, reference data, and scripted business rules. The full-web application runs natively on Linux and can be hosted on-premise or in a public or private cloud. It is free and open-source under the GNU GPLv3 license, with no limit on users. Optional modules include Splitter for preparing batches, Verifier for checking extracted data, and MailCollect for email processing. MailCollect analyzes messages, identifies senders, extracts metadata, and routes attachments into processing workflows. Verifier is described for structured or semi-structured documents such as invoices, delivery notes, contracts, and purchase orders. Listed connections include a native MEM Courrier connector, CMIS, OpenADS/Oxalis, OpenCRM, Alfresco, and SharePoint; export formats include PDF, PDF/A, XML, CSV, and plain text.

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.