Surya vs TextSnatcher
Surya
github.comTextSnatcher
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Surya | TextSnatcher |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $400/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 3 | 1 |
| Spec score · OCR software | 8.7 (#6) | 7.6 (#34) |
| Supported inputs | both | image |
| Installation | The README installs Surya with pip install surya-ocr and lists Docker plus NVIDIA Container Toolkit for NVIDIA GPU use, or llama.cpp for CPU and Apple Silicon. | The README provides instructions to clone the repository, build with Meson and Ninja, and install the application. |
| Languages | The repository describes Surya as supporting OCR in 90+ languages. | The application supports multiple languages. |
| License | 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. | The repository identifies its license as GPL-3.0. |
| Primary platform | desktop | desktop |
| Purpose | Surya is a 650M-parameter OCR model for text recognition, layout analysis, reading order, and table recognition. | TextSnatcher performs OCR to copy text from images on a Linux desktop. |
| Support | Datalab lists community support on Free, email and Slack support on Team, and dedicated support on Enterprise. | The repository README includes a Support Me section but gives no support terms there. |
Plans
In their own words
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.
TextSnatcher
TextSnatcher has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.