OCR.space test: evaluate the power of a free OCR

Why test OCR.Space?

OCR.space is an optical character recognition (OCR) service available online, recognized for its ease of use and its free version. It allows you to convert images or PDF files into editable text, without requiring the installation of software.

OCR.space supports more than twenty languages, including French, English, Arabic and Chinese, including French, English, Arabic and Chinese, making it an interesting solution for various needs.

The tool also offers an API that can be accessed free of charge up to a certain volume, which appeals to both developers and small businesses looking for simple text extraction automation.

Through this test, we want to determine whether OCR.Space can really meet professional use cases or if it is better to turn to more specialized alternatives. We will analyze its functionalities, results and limitations, comparing it to other tools on the market.

Key features of OCR.space

OCR.space offers a set of interesting features for a free tool:

Performance & accuracy: test results

During our tests, OCR.space was quite responsive on standard printed materials. Recognition is generally done in a few seconds, with text that can be used immediately in simple cases.

On well-scanned documents, the Accuracy is satisfactory, with few character errors or cuts. For clear and well-aligned texts, the results can be around 99% correct recognition.

On lower quality documents, performance varies. With slightly fuzzy scans or photos of documents, useful options such as auto-rotation and enlargement improve file results.

One point to note: table recognition is managed quite well, with a specific mode that aligns rows from the source table in the text extraction, which can be useful for documents like invoices or statements. However, it should be noted that this does not replace a 100% structured extraction (field by field): you get formatted text, but not directly a table that can be used in the form of a spreadsheet for example.

Concerning the handwriting as well as on old documents or very stylized fonts, performance deteriorates. Like most free OCRs, OCR.space does not support handwriting recognition (no ICR module). In these types of cases, more specialized or trained solutions are generally required.

Finally, it should be noted that the original layout (fonts, images, formatting) is not retained in plain text or JSON output. OCR.space provides plain text, but without visual formatting. For cases where presentation is essential (such as converting to Word that is true to the original), other tools offer better results.

OCR.Space is therefore doing well forfast text extraction from simple documents, especially in occasional or exploratory use. For more advanced needs (handwritten documents, structured extraction, style preservation), more robust solutions will be preferable.

Pro pricing and options

One of the major assets of OCR.Space is its generous free offer.

Without paying a cent, you can process documents both via the web interface and via the API. The free online service accepts files up to 5MB and the free API allows up to 25,000 requests per month (around 500 per day) with a simple API key.

Beyond these limits, OCR.Space offers paid plans affordable.

For businesses with specific requirements, there is an offer Enterprise custom made (starting at ~$999/month). This makes it possible to obtain a dedicated OCR server, which can even be deployed locally (on-premise) in your infrastructure.

OCR.space offers the possibility to buy a software license to install its OCR engine on your own servers, thus ensuring that data does not leave your network. This local version provides the same performance and features as the PRO cloud version, but works 100% offline. An asset for organizations concerned about absolute confidentiality or with regulatory constraints.

In summary, OCR.space's pricing is flexible and ultra-competitive compared to the giants of the sector.

For occasional use or as part of a small structure, the free or PRO version of OCR.space can be an economical option, with satisfactory results depending on the types of documents processed.

Security & confidentiality

OCR.space takes a “stateless” approach: the files sent are not neither stored nor preserved after treatment. The documents are analyzed in memory, then immediately deleted — a reassuring way, especially for a free service.

La free version relies on servers based in the United States, which can raise compliance issues for European businesses. However, paid plans allow you toaccess servers in Europe or Asia, or even to switch to On-premise for 100% internal processing, without data transfer.

No registration is required for online use, and payment data is managed securely by an external service provider (FastSpring).

Comparing with competing OCRs

The OCR market includes a wide range of tools: free online services, open source libraries, cloud APIs from major platforms or even dedicated professional software. But not all of these solutions meet the same requirements, or the same use cases. In this overview, it is essential to identify the strengths and limitations of each approach in order to choose the solution that best suits your real needs.

Free online OCRs:

Comparable services are available such as OnlineOCR, NewOCR, FreeOCR etc. Most also offer a basic free conversion but with tighter limitations (for example, OnlineOCR limits to 15 pages per hour and 15 MB per file.

OCR.space is distinguished by the absence of an hourly limit and a very generous monthly quota.

In addition, it offers more features (language choice, PDF output, public API) where others are content with the minimum.

In terms of accuracy, OCR.Space is often cited for its reliability, which makes it very competitive compared to other free solutions.

Open source libraries:

Tesseract is a free OCR engine, regularly used in technical or academic projects. It offers great flexibility, especially for developers, but requires complex configuration and does not provide a ready-to-use solution.

It is efficient in a controlled environment, but requires significant work to obtain reliable results on various documents. It is a good option for technical teams with internal resources, but not very suitable for organizations that want to quickly deploy an operational solution.

Professional OCR software:

Professional solutions like ABBYY FineReader, Adobe Acrobat Pro, or specialized platforms like Koncile, Rossum, Klippa or Nanonets go well beyond raw OCR. They integrate advanced functionalities such as the extraction of specific fields, automatic classification, or integration with business tools.

For example, ABBYY allows you to edit and maintain the layout of the converted document, Adobe Acrobat integrates OCR into a PDF management solution, and platforms like Koncile, Rossum, or Nanonets use AI to extract specific fields (invoice amount, date, etc.) of a document.

Compared to these solutions, OCR.Space remains focused on raw text extraction, without advanced semantic understanding. It will not replace a Document Automation (IDP) tool that structures and validates data. However, it can perfectly serve as an OCR technological brick in a wider flow, in particular via its API.

What is the best OCR tool?

Is there a “best” universal OCR? Not really. The answer depends above all on your needs: type of documents to be processed, daily volumes, compliance constraints, budget or even the expected level of automation.

OCR.space is among the top choices in the category of Free online OCRs. It is simple, accessible, and offers good precision on printed texts, especially for occasional or low-volume uses. If your goal is to quickly convert a few documents without a dedicated budget, OCR.space is a good solution.

For business use, these tools quickly show their limits. When it comes to processing large volumes or transforming documents into usable data in an ERP or accounting software, it becomes essential to rely on a more robust solution.

That is precisely why we developed Koncile; an intelligent OCR solution designed to process all types of professional documents :

• Invoices,
• order forms,
• contracts,
• supporting documents,
• bank statements,
• etc.

Unlike a traditional OCR engine, Koncile integrates an artificial intelligence layer based on language models (LLM). This allows our solution to:

• of Understand the overall meaning of a document and its business context,
• of automatically deduce useful fields, even if their wording or position varies,
• And of manage complex cases : duplicates, missing data, ambiguous labels, or fields scattered across the page.

So we're not just extracting text:

• We Let's identify the key fields (amounts HT/TTC, VAT, SIRET, IBAN, IBAN, currency, conversion rate, dates, contractual objects...)
• We automatically classify each document according to its type and use (invoice, voucher, pay slip, receipt, etc.)
• And we Let's structure the results in usable formats: JSON, Excel, or direct connection to your business tools (ERP, accounting software, EDM, internal workflow...).

Whether you process documents in bulk, multilingual or with heterogeneous formats, our OCR engine combined with business intelligence makes it possible to gain in efficiency, reliability, and traceability.

Priority use cases

OCR.space is particularly useful in several common contexts:

• Digitization of printed documents : letters, reports, contracts or articles can be transformed into editable text in a few clicks, without manual retyping.
• Extracting text from an image : screenshot, photo of a panel or book page... just upload the image to retrieve the text, handy for copying a quote or the content of a slide.
• Punctual processing of invoices or receipts : useful for freelancers or small structures. The “receipt/table” mode allows you to extract the purchase lines, which can be read line by line. Be careful, this is still plain, unstructured text.
• Development and prototyping : thanks to its free API, OCR.Space can easily be integrated into projects (scan apps, automation scripts, POC...). A simple solution to test with no initial cost.
• Academic or student use : to extract text from scanned articles, archives or images in a foreign language (combined with a translator). The absence of installation is ideal on shared workstations.

Quick tutorial: test OCR.space in 3 minutes

Ready to try OCR.Space for yourself? Follow this quick guide to use the tool in under 3 minutes:

1. Open the OCR.space site
   Open your browser and go to the official page. No registration is required for basic use.
2. Import your document
   Click “Upload File” to select an image or PDF, or paste an image URL online. Choose the language of the text you want to recognize from the dropdown menu.
3. Configure options (optional)
   By default, the tool automatically detects the orientation and enhances the image. Activate the “receipt scanning and/or table recognition” option if your document contains a table or a receipt. You can also check “Create searchable PDF” to generate a file with a text layer. The OCR engine (Engine1 or Engine2) can be changed in the advanced settings.
4. Start recognition
   Click on “Start OCR! ” to start treatment. This usually lasts a few seconds.
5. Check out the results
   Recognized text appears in the tab Text and can be copied. If a PDF has been requested, a download link is displayed. The “Show Overlay” option allows you to visualize the text on the source image.
6. (Optional) Access JSON data
   Switch to the tab JSON to consult structured results: full text, word coordinates, etc. This format is particularly useful for integrations via API.

And that's it, in less than three minutes you've converted your image into text! Feel free to try different types of documents to see the results. If you notice errors, you can adjust the options (language, engine) and restart to try to improve recognition.

Advantages & limitations of OCR Space

To summarize objectively, here are the main strengths and weaknesses of OCR.space:

How do you choose the right one?

Faced with the multitude of OCR tools available, how do you find your way around and choose the most suitable solution for your needs? Here are some criteria and tips to guide your decision:

1. Type of documents

Simple texts, tables, forms, manuscripts... The more complex the document is, the more you will need a tool that can structure the information.

For standard printed text, a tool like OCR.Space is sufficient. But when it comes to fields to be extracted, multi-page tables or heterogeneous formats, a specialized solution becomes essential.

2. Volume and frequency

A few documents per week? A free or online solution will do the trick. But if you're dealing with hundreds of pages per day, think about performance, quotas, and cost per page. OCR.space PRO offers a good price/volume compromise, but for mass or real-time treatments, opt for scalable or local solutions.

3. Confidentiality and integration

If your documents cannot pass through a public cloud, choose an on-premise solution (OCR.Space Entreprise, Tesseract, ABBYY...). Also check if you need an API or a ready-to-use interface according to your teams.

4. Budget

Start by testing the free solutions. Some already cover a large part of the needs. If reliability or business automation is strategic, the return on investment justifies the adoption of a more advanced tool.

5. Test your documents

Each tool has strengths and weaknesses. Test them out on your own sample files to compare error rate, speed, and the need for manual reprocessing.

FAQS

Can OCR Space be used without a connection?

In its standard version, non, OCR.space is an online service that requires an internet connection. Whether via the website or the cloud API, your documents must be sent to OCR.space servers to be processed, which requires being connected. It is not possible to download the tool to run locally for free. The only exception is the Enterprise on-premise offer where you can install the OCR.space engine on a local server. But this option is paid and intended for businesses.

Is there a language limitation?

OCR.space takes care more than 20 languages by default, including the main European languages (French, English, English, German, Spanish...), Asian languages (French, English, German, Spanish...), as well as Arabic, Russian or Turkish. There is no charge for any language, all supported languages can be used free of charge. Simply select the language of the document to optimize recognition. An option of automatic detection is available via engine 2, but it can still be improved.

Some rare languages may not be supported. For everyday use, no major limitations is not to be expected.