PaddleOCR-VL vs Unstructured
PaddleOCR-VL is cheaper per page; PaddleOCR-VL is faster; only PaddleOCR-VL supports math, confidence.
PaddleOCR-VLpaddle/paddleocr-vl | Unstructuredunstructured/unstructured | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Open source | OCR API |
| Price | 2 credits / page | 20 credits / page |
| Per 1,000 pages | $2.00 | $20.00 |
| Typical speed | 1.3 s / page | 3.0 s / page |
| Best for | CJK documents | Mixed file types into RAG |
| Inputs | PDF, images | PDF, images, DOCX |
| Languages | 109 languages | Multilingual |
| Max pages per request | 500 | 1,000 |
| Tables | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Handwriting | No | No |
| 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 detailsUnstructured
Document ETL for RAG. Partitions many file types into typed elements; open-source library too.
Unstructured detailsUse one, fall back to the other
Request body
{
"model": "paddle/paddleocr-vl",
"fallbacks": ["unstructured/unstructured"],
"file_url": "https://example.com/document.pdf"
}