Traditional scanning and processing documents like receipts, images, and invoices for important data always end with errors and delays.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software enables the digitization of essential data that is included in paper documents and photographs.
Using API for OCR software helps businesses save time and resources. Recent data shows that more organizations are going paperless and leveraging cloud-based digital OCR API solutions to improve bottom lines.
The API for OCR applications can capture text from PDFs and images and convert them into editable formats like Word, Excel, or plain text. However, make sure that you use the appropriate OCR API for your needs before scanning your data.
What is the applicable field for API for OCR?
OCR is a helpful technology for developers of all applications, including healthcare, banking, accounting, eCommerce and retail, law, identifying vehicles, and dozens of other uses.
In addition, you can integrate OCR services with applications using Application Programming Interface APIs.
The article will provide you with the top ten OCR API available in 2022.
Open Source Vs API
You have two options when you need an OCR engine:
Open source API: There are dozens of open source API engines available, but they have multiple drawbacks. For example, they are challenging to set up and not user-friendly. Moreover, to run an open source engine, you need an internal server, and the biggest drawback is that the AI library requires data science expertise.
Cloud provider API: you can use engines from a cloud provider like AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba Cloud, or IBM Watson to provide multiple AI engines, including OCR. The engine is ready-to-use and very easy because you can stay in a known environment where you might have abilities in your company.
Why is Filestack API for OCR considered one of the best in its class?
Initially, Filestack OCR API was developed for developers; it expanded rapidly and now offers a wide range of benefits. Using Filestack’s OCR product line, users can fully scale their content efforts using a single API, thanks to image intelligence functionality.
By adding just two lines of code, you can notably expand the efficacy of any uploaded file.
No matter the use case scenario, users may use the Filestack workflow capabilities to streamline content tasks within an easy-to-use UI.
Weaponizing with best-in-class capabilities used by industry leaders, Filestack follows the same trend to analyze photos quickly and deliver valuable insights. Besides simple object identification, it has copyright and object detection capabilities and explicit content detection.
Due to continuously shifting network conditions, it comes with a very responsive Content Ingestion Network (CIN) as a precaution. The result you can find is more trusted and stable with the three-fold faster upload.
Key Features
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- Extensive feature set
- Shows accelerated performance
- Secure
- Dedicated embedded file viewer
- Wide range of support for all accurate data sources
Pros
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- Filestack provides increased data collection efficiency
- Almost error-free
- Transform data effectively
- Drag and drop upload support
- Hassle-free real-time photo and video upload with your device’s camera
- Supports multi-part uploaders for more efficiently optimized uploads
Cons
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- It needs a subscription and costs some money
You can easily integrate Filestack API for OCR here.
How good is ABBYY’s FineReader as an API for OCR?
ABBYY FineReader is an AI-based OCR technology that can recognize text in more than 198 languages. It is an ideal solution for transforming PDFs worldwide.
Besides converting PDFs simply, it also simplifies your life with various intelligent features—for example, scanned PDFs, PDFs with images, and password-protected PDFs.
It has features that work on Windows, Android, iOS, and Mac. Therefore, ABBYY guarantees high accuracy standards while preserving wireframes for easier editing.
Pros
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- OCR editor with keyboard support for manual corrections
- Outstanding clear interface
- Exports in a variety of formats
- Documents comparison feature
- No necessary learning curve
Cons
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- UI seems complex at first
- Expensive
- Lacks full-text indexing for quick searches
- Can’t examine the document’s revision history
- No file combining feature
- The large files are often slowly processed
IBM Datacap, can it stand as a good OCR API?
Datacap extracts valuable data from corporate papers by automating the collection, identification, and classification of those documents.
Datacap offers a powerful OCR engine, several features, and programmable rules. It is compatible with fax, multiplication peripherals, mobile devices, scanners, and channels.
Key Features
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- Possess advanced document capture feature
- Role-based redaction
- AI-based intelligent processing
- Can export to other targets
- Highly adaptable rules-based capture
Pros
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- Configures sophisticated data collection applications
- Mechanism for scanning
- Easy to use
Cons
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- Difficult to set up
- Very slow
- Almost no online assistance
- UI is not user-friendly
- A customized flow is difficult to create
- Batch commitments require time
Adobe Acrobat DC: An OCR solution?
Adobe provides a comprehensive PDF editor with built-in OCR functionality. Its pro features are easy to use and compatible with a wide range of functionality.
Cons
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- Costly
- Not an exclusive OCR software
- Occupies a lot of space on the hard disk
- It does not integrate with user-friendly services like Sharepoint or Dropbox
- License required
Why is Klippa not a perfect API for OCR solutions?
Klippa is a reliable but not perfect data extraction solution to digitize paper documents in your organization by automated document management, processing, and classification.
Pros
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- Great API for developers
- Easy setup
- Dedicated support
- Wide API documentation
- Costly
Cons
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- OCR recognition should be better
- Bulk adjustments not supported
- App crashes often
- Limited template customizations
- Limited white-label customizations
- The VAT is usually not displayed correctly
- Can’t train the OCR model
- The selection process isn’t straightforward, as there are a lot of options
What is good with Free OCR API?
The Free OCR API grabs images and multi-page PDF documents (PDF OCR) and returns extracted text in JSON format.
You can use this API from any internet-connected device, including Android and iOS mobile devices and IoT devices.
How good is Cloudmersive OCR API?
Cloudmersive comes with scalable computer vision and natural language APIs. The Cloudmersive OCR allows users to convert scanned images of pages into recognized text.
The API fused with Machine Learning to automatically pre-process and acknowledge the text across over 90 languages. Features like unskew and rotated images can automatically segment documents and receipts out of photographs.
Is Mathpix API good?
The Mathpix API enables users to solve mathematical equations via OCR technology. With this API, developers can implement:
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- Image processing
- Systems of equations
- Matrices
- Long divisions
- Problem numbers
- Graphs
- Geometry diagrams.
This API supports scientific notation in chemistry, math, physics, computer science, economics, and other STEM subjects.
How good is CAPTCHAS.io API?
Being an automated captcha recognition service, CAPTCHAs.IO API supports more than 30,000 images, audio captchas, and reCAPTCHA, including invisible reCAPTCHA.
It can provide RESTful access to all of the captcha-solving methods. Developers can choose to get API responses in either JSON or plain text.
Why Tesseract OCR?
Tesseract OCR API is one of the most well-known optical character recognition platforms. It is mainly engaged in Google’s spam detection functionality.
It can identify over 100 languages, so developers can teach the solution to other languages as needed. Additionally, you can use it for video and still images. It also has considerable documentation available and an active community. It is better for paper documents, but not in all cases.
