docTR
7.5#8 in ocr softwareFree planFree planAPILinuxmacOSSelf-hosted
VisitdocTR vs Tesseract OCR
Tesseract OCR
7.9#2 in ocr softwareFree planFree planAndroidAPILinuxmacOS
VisitWhat both publish
| Fact | docTR | Tesseract OCR |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2021 | 1985 |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Input formats | docTR can read PDFs, images, and web pages, with HTML input requiring the optional html extra. | The project lists PNG, JPEG, and TIFF among its supported image formats. |
| Installation | The library can be installed with pip or from Git, and official Docker images are available from GitHub Container Registry. | The documentation describes installation through Linux distributions, macOS package managers, Windows installers, and source builds. |
| License | The project identifies its license as Apache License 2.0. | The code is licensed under Apache License 2.0 and is provided without warranties under the license terms. |
| Primary platform | desktop | desktop |
| Purpose | docTR is a deep learning OCR library for locating and recognizing text in documents, intended for document automation and research. | Tesseract is an OCR engine and command-line program for extracting printed text from images. |
| Support | The contribution guide directs users with questions to GitHub Discussions and also mentions a #doctr channel on Slack. | 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. |
| Supported inputs | both | image |
docTR plans
- docTR open-source Python libraryFree
Tesseract OCR plans
- Tesseract OCRFree
Pick docTR if…
docTR suits developers building document-automation or research workflows that need OCR for PDFs, images, or web pages. It also fits teams needing custom models, CPU or GPU inference, self-hosted deployment, or REST and browser access.
Pick Tesseract OCR if…
Tesseract OCR suits developers building image-text recognition into applications, as well as desktop users who need searchable PDFs. It is not suited to handwriting OCR.