API documentation

Quickstart

Create an API key, then send a file. New accounts start with 200 free credits.

curl https://api.ocrrouter.com/v1/ocr \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OCRROUTER_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "auto",
    "file_url": "https://example.com/invoice.pdf",
    "format": "markdown"
  }'

Request

POST https://api.ocrrouter.com/v1/ocr with a JSON body and an Authorization: Bearer header.

Other endpoints:

• GET /v1/models lists every model, its price and whether it is available. No key needed.
• POST /v1/files takes a multipart upload with a file field and returns a file_id that works for 24 hours.
• GET /v1/requests/:id returns an earlier result. Add ?format=json to get it in the other format.
• GET /v1/credits returns your balance and this key's usage.
• POST /v1/keys/temporary returns a temporary key with 50 credits. No sign-up, one per day.

Output formats

markdown

The whole document as Markdown. Tables are GitHub-flavoured tables, formulas are wrapped in $...$, and pages are separated by <!-- page:N -->.

json

The same structure from every model: pages, each with typed blocks. Block types are heading, paragraph, list, table, formula, image, header and footer. bbox, confidence and page size are null when the model does not provide them, which is the case for the models live today.

{
  "id": "req_8f2c1a41d0b3c7e9a2",
  "model": "mistral/mistral-ocr",
  "format": "json",
  "attempts": [
    {
      "model": "mistral/mistral-ocr",
      "ok": true,
      "ms": 1180
    }
  ],
  "pages": [
    {
      "index": 1,
      "width": null,
      "height": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "heading",
          "level": 1,
          "text": "Invoice INV-2041",
          "bbox": null,
          "confidence": null
        },
        {
          "type": "paragraph",
          "text": "Acme Supply Co.\n14 Harbour Street, Sydney NSW 2000",
          "bbox": null,
          "confidence": null
        },
        {
          "type": "table",
          "rows": [
            [
              "Item",
              "Qty",
              "Unit price",
              "Amount"
            ],
            [
              "A4 paper, 5 reams",
              "4",
              "$24.00",
              "$96.00"
            ]
          ],
          "markdown": "| Item | Qty | Unit price | Amount |\n|---|---|---|---|\n| A4 paper, 5 reams | 4 | $24.00 | $96.00 |",
          "bbox": null,
          "confidence": null
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "usage": {
    "pages": 1,
    "credits": 6,
    "latency_ms": 1180,
    "cached": false
  }
}

Routing and fallbacks

Set model to auto and we choose a model for each document. Use route to say what matters: cheapest, fastest or quality.

Add fallbacks to keep working through outages. If the first model errors or is rate-limited, the next one runs. The response tells you which model answered, and you pay only for that one.

{
  "model": "mistral/mistral-ocr",
  "fallbacks": ["google/gemini-flash", "tesseract/tesseract"],
  "file_url": "https://example.com/report.pdf"
}

Credits

Each model has a price in credits per page. $1 buys 1,000 credits and they do not expire. Every response includes usage.credits.

• Failed and empty results are free.
• Sending the same file to the same model again is served from cache for free.
• Each API key can have its own credit limit.

Errors

Agents, MCP and CLI

Coding agents can use OCRRouter without a sign-up step. The CLI and the MCP server ask for a temporary key with 50 credits on first use and save it in ~/.ocrrouter/config.json. Set OCRROUTER_API_KEY to use your own key.

# CLI
npx ocrrouter invoice.pdf --format markdown

# MCP server for Claude Code
claude mcp add ocrrouter -- npx ocrrouter mcp

A machine-readable summary of this page is at /llms.txt.