Tesseract OCR vs TextSnatcher
Tesseract OCR
github.comTextSnatcher
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Tesseract OCR | TextSnatcher |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · OCR software | 9.1 (#2) | 7.6 (#34) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Supported inputs | image | image |
| Installation | The documentation describes installation through Linux distributions, macOS package managers, Windows installers, and source builds. | The README provides instructions to clone the repository, build with Meson and Ninja, and install the application. |
| Languages | The project says Tesseract supports UTF-8 and recognizes more than 100 languages out of the box. | The application supports multiple languages. |
| License | The code is licensed under Apache License 2.0 and is provided without warranties under the license terms. | The repository identifies its license as GPL-3.0. |
| Primary platform | desktop | desktop |
| Purpose | Tesseract is an OCR engine and command-line program for extracting printed text from images. | TextSnatcher performs OCR to copy text from images on a Linux desktop. |
| Searchable PDF | Yes | No |
| Support | The README directs users to documentation, FAQs, user and developer forums, past issues, and mailing lists, and says issues should be used for bug reports rather than questions. | The repository README includes a Support Me section but gives no support terms there. |
Plans
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.
TextSnatcher
TextSnatcher has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.