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Google Document AI vs PaddleOCR (PP-OCR)

PaddleOCR (PP-OCR) is cheaper per page; PaddleOCR (PP-OCR) is faster; only Google Document AI supports tables, forms, handwriting.

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Google Document AIgoogle/document-aiPaddleOCR (PP-OCR)paddle/paddleocr
TypeOCR APIOpen source
Price3 credits / page1 credit / page
Per 1,000 pages$3.00$1.00
Typical speed1.4 s / page0.7 s / page
Best forMultilingual scansFast printed text, Chinese and English
InputsPDF, imagesPDF, images
Languages200+ languages80+ languages
Max pages per request500500
Tables✓ YesNo
Handwriting✓ YesNo
MathNoNo
Bounding boxes✓ Yes✓ Yes
Confidence✓ Yes✓ Yes
Forms✓ YesNo
Multilingual✓ Yes✓ Yes
On OCRRouterAvailableComing soon

Prices are what you pay on OCRRouter. Speed is the provider's typical figure, not a benchmark we ran.

What each one is

Google Document AI

Google Cloud OCR with layout parsing and specialised processors.

Google Document AI details

PaddleOCR (PP-OCR)

Baidu's classic open-source text detection and recognition pipeline. Light enough to run on CPU.

PaddleOCR (PP-OCR) details

Use one, fall back to the other

Request body
{
  "model": "google/document-ai",
  "fallbacks": ["paddle/paddleocr"],
  "file_url": "https://example.com/document.pdf"
}

Questions

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