We updated our OCR Engine 2 with full PDF OCR support, including auto-rotation and receipt OCR. And while we are at it, we also improved the processing speed of the engine 2.

How to test the PDF OCR Features of Engine2

You can test the PDF OCR and performance update with the free online OCR feature on our front page. You can switch between both OCR engines and compare the result. Please note that the the free online OCR uses our free OCR API, so the performance is the one of the free OCR API endpoint api.ocr.space.

Engine 1 continues to be the engine with the most language options, including Arabic OCR, Chinese OCR, Korean OCR, Japanese OCR, Russian OCR.

OCR engine2 is best suited for alpha-numberic OCR with Latin characters.

Both engines are fast, but OCR engine1 is still about twice as fast. Excluding upload times, typical conversions speeds are ~0.3-0.5s for engine1, and ~0.6-0.8s for engine2 for the PRO endpoints. Our free OCR API endpoint is sometimes slower due to the much higher load on the free OCR API servers. We run the free OCR servers with a much high load to keep the cost of offering free OCR software (SaaS) reasonable.

The format of returned OCR API result (JSON) is identical for both engines. Thus you can easily switch between both engines as needed. Just change the OCREngine parameter from “1” to “2”. If you have any question about using Engine 1 or 2, please ask in our UI.Vision OCR API Forum.

Next on our todo list is to add the option to generate searchable PDF to engine2 and make OCR Engine2 available as on-premise OCR software, too.