Comparison of optical character recognition software

This comparison of optical character recognition software includes:

• OCR engines, that do the actual character identification
• Layout analysis software, that divide scanned documents into zones suitable for OCR
• Graphical interfaces to one or more OCR engines
• Software development kits that are used to add OCR capabilities to other software (e.g. forms processing applications, document imaging management systems, e-discovery systems, records management solutions)

Sortable table

Name	Founded year	Latest stable version	Release year	License	Online	Windows	Mac OS X	Linux	BSD	Programming language	SDK?	Languages	Fonts	Output Formats	Notes
Tesseract	1985	3.04	2015	Apache	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	C++, C	Yes	100+[1]	?	Text, hOCR,[2] PDF, others with different user interfaces[3] or the API	Created by Hewlett-Packard; under further development by Google[4]
Screenworm	2013	1.0	2014	Proprietary	No	No	Yes	No	No	Objective-C++	No	57	?	TXT	Product of Funchip. Uses the Tesseract OCR-engine.
ExperVision[5] TypeReader & RTK	1987	7.1.170.1125	2010	Proprietary	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	C/C++	Yes	21	2618		Has a Mobile and Embedded System version for iOS/Android/etc.
AliusDoc AD-SCI[6]	2005	2.1	2015	Proprietary	No	Yes	No	No	No	VB.Net	For Extensions	All ASCII-compatible languages	?	XML, PlainText, any other thru SDK extensions	Minimal need for post-sale Professional Services. Works with structured, semi-structured, and unstructured documents.
ABBYY FineReader	1989	12	2014	Proprietary	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	C/C++	Yes	198[7]	?	DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPTX, RTF, PDF, HTML, CSV, TXT, ODT, DjVu, EPUB, FB2[8]	ABBYY also supplies SDKs for embedded and mobile devices. Professional, Corporate and Site License Editions for Windows, Express Edition for Mac.[9]
e-Aksharayan	2010					Yes	No	Yes	No			14		RTF, TXT, BRL
Asprise OCR SDK	1998	15	2015	Proprietary	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Java, C#,VB.NET, C/C++/Delphi	Yes	20+[10]	?	Plain text, searchable PDF, XML[11]	Java, C#, VB.NET, C/C++/Delphi SDKs for OCR and Barcode recognition on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Unix.[12]
Nicomsoft OCR SDK	1999	5.5	2015	Proprietary	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	C#, VB.NET, C++, Delphi, Java	Yes	25+[13]	style="background: #ececec; color: #2C2C2C; font-size: smaller; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="unknown table-unknown"|?	Searchable PDF, Text, RTF	C#, VB.NET, C++, Delphi, Java OCR tool for Windows and Linux.[14]
AnyDoc Software	1989	?	?	Proprietary	No	Yes	No	No	No	VBScript	?	?	?		Works with structured, semi-structured, and unstructured documents.
LEADTOOLS[15]	1990[16]	19.0	2014	Proprietary	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	C/C++, .NET, Objective-C, Java, JavaScript	Yes	56[17]	Any printed font	PDF, PDF/A, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XPS, RTF, HTML, ANSI Text, Unicode Text, CSV[18]	Supports Latin, Asian, Arabic, and MICR character sets.[15] For full page, zonal, and form image processing. Includes OCR, barcode, OMR and forms recognition.[19] ICR (handwritten text recognition) is supported.[20]
CuneiForm	1996	12	2007	BSD variant	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	C/C++	Yes	28	Any printed font	HTML, hOCR, native, RTF, TeX, TXT[21]	Enterprise-class system, can save text formatting and recognizes complicated tables of any structure
(a9t9)FreeOCR	2015	1.022	2015	GPL	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	C#	Yes	23	Any printed font	TXT	Windows desktop software, Windows Store application and online web app - converts scanned documents to editable text documents using OCR.
SimpleOCR	2002	3.5	2008	Proprietary	No	Yes	No	No	No	?	?	?	?
Dynamsoft OCR SDK	2003	8.2	2012	Proprietary	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	C/C++	Yes	40+[22]	?	PDF, TXT	Dynamsoft is the leading provider of image capture SDKs and version control tools.
OmniPage	1970's	18	1988	Proprietary	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	C/C++, C#[23]	Yes	125[24]	Machine and handprinted fonts	DOC/DOCX XLS/XLSX PPTX RTF PDF PDF/A Searchable PDF HTML Text XML ePUB MP3	Product of Nuance Communications
Microsoft Office OneNote 2007	2007	?	2007	Proprietary	No	Yes	No	No	No	?	?	?	?
FreeOCR	?	4.2	August 2012	Proprietary	No	Yes	No	No	No	?	?	?	?		[25]
GOCR	2000	0.50	2013	GPL	Yes[26]	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	C	?	?	?
Ocrad	?	0.22[27]	2013	GPL	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	C++	Yes	Latin alphabet	?		Command line
SmartScore	?	?	?	Proprietary	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	?	?	?	?		For musical scores
Microsoft Office Document Imaging	?	Office 2007	2007	Proprietary	No	Yes	No	No	No	?	?	?	?		Uses OmniPage
OCR.net	2016	?	2016	Proprietary	Yes	No	No	No	No	Java, C++, PHP, Objective-c	No	100+	?	TXT, Searchable PDF	Online service powered by PDF OCR X for conversions.
PDF OCR X	2008	2.0.22	2016	Proprietary	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	Java, C++, Objective-C	No	100+	?	TXT, Searchable PDf	Drag and drop UI.
Puma.NET	?	?	?	BSD	No	Yes	No	No	No	C#	Yes	28	Any printed font		.NET OCR SDK based on Cognitive Technologies' CuneiForm recognition engine. Wraps Puma COM server and provides simplified API for .NET applications
ReadSoft	?	?	?	Proprietary	No	Yes	No	No	No	?	?	?	?		Scan, capture and classify business documents such as invoices, forms and purchase orders integrated with business processes.
Scantron	?	?	?	Proprietary	No	Yes	No	No	No	?	?	?	?		For working with localized interfaces, corresponding language support is required.
OCRFeeder	?	0.7.11	2009	GPL	No	No	No	Yes	No	Python	?	?	?		Features a full user interface and has a command-line tool for automatic operations. Has its own segmentation algorithm but uses system-wide OCR engines like Tesseract or Ocrad
OCRopus	?	0.6	2012	Apache	No	No	No	Yes	No	Python	?	?	?	hOCR, HTML, TXT[28]	Pluggable framework under active development, used for Google Books
MathOCR	2014	0.0.3	2015	GPL	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Java	?	?	?	HTML, LaTeX	Features mathematical formula recognition and logical layout analysis, can use OCR engines like Tesseract or Ocrad as back-end.
MeOCR	2012	1.0.0	2012	Free	No	Yes	No	No	No	C/C++/C#	Yes	28	Any printed font	HTML, hOCR, native, RTF, TeX, TXT	Windows application. Converts scanned documents to editable text documents using OCR and exports them to Microsoft Word with one click. Features a full user interface and also has a .NET Interface library[29] for developers.
Yunmai OCR SDK	2002	1.0	2013	Proprietary	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Java, C++, C, object pascal, objective-C	Yes	14	Any printed font	TXT, PDF	Has the advantage of Chinese characters recognition.[30]
Anyline SDK	2013[31]	3.5.1[32]	2016[32]	Free non-commercial use[33]	No	No*	No*	No*	No*	Java (Android), Objective-C & Swift (iOS), C# (Windows Phone, Xamarin), JavaScript (Cordova)[34]	Yes[33]	2 (German, English)	Any printed trainable font[35]	Plain text, verification image	*Customizable mobile OCR SDK for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Smart glasses (Google Glass, Epson Moverio,...)
Name	Founded year	Latest stable version	Release year	License	Online	Windows	Mac OS X	Linux	BSD	Programming language	SDK?	Languages	Fonts	Output Formats	Notes

References

1. Based on count of language training files for version 3.04. Available at the download page.
2. Usage explained in the Tesseract Readme and FAQ
3. Such as ODF with OCRFeeder
4. "GitHub - tesseract-ocr/tesseract: Tesseract Open Source OCR Engine (main repository)". Retrieved 2016-03-08.
5. "OpenRTK – ExperVision OCR SDK | OCR Software, OCR SDK & Toolkit, OCR Service – ExperVision OCR". Expervision.com. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
6. "AliusDoc AD-SCI". AliusDoc.com. Retrieved 2015-10-16.
7. "ABBYY FineReader 11: Full Feature List". Finereader.abbyy.com. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
8. "ABBYY FineReader 11: Technical Specifications". Finereader.abbyy.com. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
9. "Top OCR Software". Ocrworld.com. 2010-03-30. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
10. "Asprise OCR SDK Features". asprise.com. Retrieved 2014-06-21.
11. "Asprise Java OCR Library Features". asprise.com. Retrieved 2014-06-21.
12. "Asprise Java, C#/VB.NET OCR API". asprise.com. 2015-11-19. Retrieved 2015-11-19.
13. "Nicomsoft OCR SDK Features". nicomsoft.com. Retrieved 2015-01-08.
14. "Nicomsoft OCR, C#/VB.NET OCR API". nicomsoft.com. 2015-01-08. Retrieved 2015-01-08.
15. "Ocr Sdk". Leadtools. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
16. "LEAD Technologies, Inc. Corporate Information". Leadtools.com. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
17. "Ocr Sdk". Leadtools. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
18. "OCR SDK Output Formats". Leadtools. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
19. "LEADTOOLS Recognition Imaging Developer Toolkit". Leadtools.com. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
20. "Icr Sdk". Leadtools. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
21. Debian manual page for Cuneiform for Linux version 1.1.0
22. "OCR SDK Language Packages Download". Dynamsoft.com. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
23. "OmniPage CSDK - OCR Document Capture Toolkit | Document Imaging & OCR". Nuance. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
24. "OmniPage Standard Document Conversion". Nuance. Retrieved 2014-02-25.
25. "Free OCR Software - Optical Character Recognition Software for Windows import from PDF and Twain Scanners". Paperfile.net. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
26. "GOCR". Jocr.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
27. Diaz, Antonio (2013-07-12). "Version 0.22 of GNU Ocrad released" (Mailing list). info-gnu.
28. OCRopus includes the ocropus-hocr tool which produces hOCR from the recognition results.
29. "MeOCR .NET Library".
30. "List of Yunmai OCR SDKs". yunmai.com. Retrieved 2015-07-12.
31. "Company | Anyline". Anyline. 2016-06-30. Retrieved 2016-06-30.
32. "Release Notes Archives - ANYLINE". ANYLINE. Retrieved 2016-06-30.
33. "anyline". npm. Retrieved 2016-06-30.
34. "API Reference". documentation.anyline.io. Retrieved 2016-06-30.
35. "Fonts | Anyline". Anyline. 2016-06-30. Retrieved 2016-06-30.