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PaddleOCR (PP-OCR) vs Kraken

PaddleOCR (PP-OCR) is faster; only PaddleOCR (PP-OCR) supports confidence; only Kraken supports handwriting.

PaddleOCR (PP-OCR)paddle/paddleocrKrakenkraken/kraken
TypeOpen sourceOpen source
Price1 credit / page1 credit / page
Per 1,000 pages$1.00$1.00
Typical speed0.7 s / page1.5 s / page
Best forFast printed text, Chinese and EnglishHistorical documents and manuscripts
InputsPDF, imagesimages
Languages80+ languagesMany scripts, incl. right-to-left
Max pages per request500500
TablesNoNo
HandwritingNo✓ Yes
MathNoNo
Bounding boxes✓ Yes✓ Yes
Confidence✓ YesNo
FormsNoNo
Multilingual✓ Yes✓ Yes
On OCRRouterComing soonComing 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 (PP-OCR)

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

PaddleOCR (PP-OCR) details

Kraken

OCR engine for historical documents and manuscripts, with trainable models for unusual scripts.

Kraken details

Use one, fall back to the other

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

Questions

More comparisons

PaddleOCR (PP-OCR) alternativesKraken alternatives