PaddleOCR-VL vs Kraken
Kraken is cheaper per page; PaddleOCR-VL is faster; only PaddleOCR-VL supports tables, math, confidence; only Kraken supports handwriting.
PaddleOCR-VLpaddle/paddleocr-vl | Krakenkraken/kraken | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Open source | Open source |
| Price | 2 credits / page | 1 credit / page |
| Per 1,000 pages | $2.00 | $1.00 |
| Typical speed | 1.3 s / page | 1.5 s / page |
| Best for | CJK documents | Historical documents and manuscripts |
| Inputs | PDF, images | images |
| Languages | 109 languages | Many scripts, incl. right-to-left |
| Max pages per request | 500 | 500 |
| Tables | ✓ Yes | No |
| Handwriting | No | ✓ Yes |
| Math | ✓ Yes | No |
| Bounding boxes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Confidence | ✓ Yes | No |
| Forms | No | No |
| Multilingual | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| On OCRRouter | Available | Coming soon |
Prices are what you pay on OCRRouter. Speed is the provider's typical figure, not a benchmark we ran.
What each one is
PaddleOCR-VL
Open-source document model from Baidu. Excellent on Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
PaddleOCR-VL detailsKraken
OCR engine for historical documents and manuscripts, with trainable models for unusual scripts.
Kraken detailsUse one, fall back to the other
Request body
{
"model": "paddle/paddleocr-vl",
"fallbacks": ["kraken/kraken"],
"file_url": "https://example.com/document.pdf"
}