Tesseract OCR vs WatchOCR
Tesseract OCR
github.comWatchOCR
watchocr.comSide by side
| Figure | Tesseract OCR | WatchOCR |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| 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 (#30) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Supported inputs | image | both |
| License | The code is licensed under Apache License 2.0 and is provided without warranties under the license terms. | The site says that unless otherwise specified, the software is under the GNU General Public License and may be copied, modified, and redistributed subject to the same license for recipients. |
| Primary platform | desktop | both |
| Purpose | Tesseract is an OCR engine and command-line program for extracting printed text from images. | 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
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.