9 Best OCR Software Solutions in 2024

OCR software helps you read, extract, classify, and convert any kind of document or image that contains typed, handwritten, or printed text. It does so by leveraging Optical Character Recognition technology, which turns unstructured documents into structured, machine-readable data. 

The need for well-performing OCR software is constantly growing. Documents such as emails, images or scanned files, pose a big challenge to organizations, due to their unstructured nature. Manually extracting information from these files is a time-consuming and repetitive task, as unstructured data needs further processing, delaying your business processes even more. 

As the market offers many OCR solutions, it’s important to go through all the viable options and compare them, before coming to a decision. In this blog, you will find a list of the best OCR software in 2024, as well as tips on how to choose the best solution for your business. Let’s get started!

Best OCR Software Solutions

Without beating around the bush for too long, let’s delve right into the list and see the best 9 OCR software in 2024.

1. Klippa OCR

Klippa’s AI-powered Document OCR puts an end to manual data entry, reduces errors, and prevents document fraud. This OCR solution helps improve the turnaround time in document processing and reduce operational costs. 

The smart OCR software from Klippa helps you capture, recognize, and convert scanned documents such as receipts, invoices, or passports into structured data automatically. Whether you need document automation for your loyalty programs, cashback campaigns, identity verification, or document processing, the AI-driven OCR solution can successfully help you capture the data you need.

Pros 

• Submit files anytime via the app, FTP, web, and email
• Process documents within seconds with up to 99% extraction accuracy
• Process PDF, JPG, PNG, and other file formats
• Document classification with AI
• Convert files to JSON, PDF, XLSX, CSV, UBL, or XML
• Integrate OCR software via API or SDK to third-party applications
• Make use of available documentation for a smooth integration process 
• Extract accurate and reliable data with AI-powered image pre-processing

Cons

• Only processes languages in the Latin alphabet

2. Rossum

Rossum offers an AI-powered OCR to its users. Rossum’s solution helps users reduce manual data entry and facilitate data extraction from various document types. 

Pros 

• Up to 95% data extraction accuracy
• AI-powered OCR
• Detection of duplicate documents
• Document classification with AI
• Data privacy and security compliance
• Multiple integrations available

Cons

• Lack of available documentation for integration
• Based on user reviews, the software occasionally fails to accurately extract data from specific kinds of documents (Software Advice)

3. ChronoScan OCR

ChronoScan is a multipurpose software designed to help you with document processing and data capture and extraction using OCR technology. This complete suite for data entry works in a fast way, enabling you to organize your documents in minutes. 

Pros

• Batch-processing for high-volume documents
• Can be integrated into third-party applications, such as CRM or ERP systems
• Document management for scanned and digitized files

Cons

• Only converts PDF files to XML or CSV
• Does not offer onboarding support for its solution
• No fraud detection for documents or images.
• Based on user reviews, extended features like workflow automation and archiving are only available with the premium version (Capterra)

4. Tungsten Automation (Kofax)

Tungsten Automation OCR helps convert and edit documents, as well as making them searchable and shareable. Tungsten’s intelligent automation platform helps automate document processing in workflows.

Pros

• Fields and line item capture
• Document storage
• Search, edit, and access documents on any device
• Good documentation verification system

Cons

• No onboarding support
• Lack of available output formats
• Low OCR accuracy
• Cannot detect handwriting
• Based on user reviews, the implementation and learning curve for the software is tedious (Gartner)

5. Nanonets

Nanonets is an OCR software provider that offers a modern and functional solution for automating document-related processes. Nanonets helps companies automate document-heavy business processes like accounts payable, order processing and insurance underwriting.

Pros

• Data extraction from PDFs, images, scans, tables, emails, and websites
• Handwriting recognition
• End-to-end document management system 
• Good customer support
• Line item and custom data field extraction

Cons

• Limited outputs available for the extracted data
• Limited line item extraction options
• Based on user reviews, the software is relatively expensive for smaller businesses and lacks quality customer support (TechRadar)

6. Amazon Textract 

Amazon Textract is a good solution for businesses that need to extract printed text from various document types. This software uses machine learning to extract both structured and unstructured data from your files.

Pros

• The model trained on a large variety of documents
• Create smart search indexes
• Create document processing workflows
• Document classification for improved archiving

Cons

• Template-based OCR
• Only processes documents in English, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese
• Only supports PNG, JPEG, and PDF formats
• Processing large volumes of documents only possible with the premium version
• Based on user reviews, the OCR has a lot of accuracy issues (G2)

7. Docsumo OCR

Docsumo‘s OCR is a quick and efficient way to extract data from images or PDF documents. It uses deep learning to create machine-readable text. Docsumo’s solution makes scanning and data extraction easy, no matter how complicated the layout is.

Pros 

• Up to 90% accuracy in data extraction
• Option to review extraction output, for increased accuracy
• Convert the documents to JSON, Excel, CSV, or TXT 
• Does not store processed documents on its servers 
• Table extraction, from PDF to Excel

Cons

• The only supported input format is PDF
• Only processes 4 files simultaneously
• Cannot process files larger than 200MB
• Based on user reviews, Docsumo provides categories for documents that can be processed, and if users go outside of these categories (e.g. unique invoices) the software experiences issues with data extraction (Software Advice)

8. OCR.space

Ocr.space is a cloud-based service that uses OCR to convert scanned documents or images containing text into editable PDF files. This OCR solution allows you to upload images or files in PNG, JPG, WEBP, or PDF formats or paste your URL to the source file.

Pros

• Automatic image pre-processing
• Table recognition system
• Auto-enlarge documents for the best quality
• Searchable system for converted documents
• Ideal for a small volume of documents

Cons

• File size restriction for documents bigger than 5MB
• Template-based OCR, which comes with limitations
• Extraction output can only be in JSON format
• Bulk processing is available only with the premium plan

9. Tesseract

​​Tesseract is an open-source OCR software used to extract text from images. Tesseract can recognize more than 100 languages and it is compatible with many programming languages and frameworks. 

Pros

• Free OCR solution
• Can be wrapped and coupled with Python OCR libraries
• Great documentation available

Cons

• Time-consuming and expensive to set up
• Lack of document types available for processing
• Does not perform document verification
• Does not cross-validate data
• Not compliant with data privacy regulations
• Not able to detect document fraud or forgery
• Based on user reviews, Tesseract OCR can be highly inaccurate, especially while processing medium and low quality images (Reddit)

Free OCR Solutions

When you have a simple use for OCR with a low document processing volume, you may want to consider free OCR solutions available. Some of these options include:

• New OCR
• Online OCR
• Office Lens
• Tesseract
• OCR.space
• OCR.Best

While these solutions are free, they do come with certain limitations you want to take into consideration:

• Lack of scalability: Often these free optical character recognition software solutions don’t offer the scalability that you may need, especially when your document volume is set to increase, while your business is steadily growing.
• Low data extraction accuracy: Most of the free solutions don’t have data extraction capabilities to get information extracted accurately, creating more bottlenecks than it solves. 
• Require resources to develop: Open-source OCR software like Tesseract is a good option, however, it requires time and money to build, train, and maintain, so it fits your business needs.

Before committing to an OCR provider, it’s recommended you first assess the criteria based on which you would choose the OCR software.

Criteria For Choosing The Best OCR Provider 

It’s important to know what you want from an OCR vendor. To find the best company, you can use the following list to determine which vendors are right for you based on your business’s needs: 

• Document support: Whether your business needs to process a large volume of documents monthly, or only a few, having good document support is of very big help. Be it financial, identity or legal documents, having an OCR solution that is able to process different document types is always a plus.
• Document capture versatility: It might not always be that businesses use the entirety of a document’s information. Therefore, an important feature to look for is the extraction of separate line items, as well as key-value pairs. 
• Data extraction accuracy: Most OCR solutions available on the market have an extraction accuracy of 80%. However, if you want to get accurate results from the get-go, you might want to look for an OCR solution that achieves up to 95% accuracy in data capture.  
• Onboarding support: It is important to have unconditional support from your OCR provider. Great customer service is essential not only during the onboarding process but also throughout the entire collaboration. 
• Bulk document processing: Improving the turnaround time in document-related processes is every company’s goal. Processing a document one by one is far from achieving efficiency, thus having the option to upload and process documents in bulk is a great asset for an OCR solution. 
• Document fraud detection: Assessing the authenticity of files and images and complying with data privacy regulations is a crucial matter for any organization, regardless of its industry. Having OCR software that can detect forgery or document fraud helps businesses stay compliant and saves large amounts of money simultaneously. 
• Extensive documentation: To ensure a seamless integration process, intelligent document recognition software must come with extensive documentation upon integration. This makes the transition seamless, for instance to existing applications such as Xero, UIPath, NetSuite, or your company’s CRM and ERP systems.

For your convenience, we created a downloadable comparison checklist for you. This will help in comparing different OCR providers and choosing the right solution.

How To Switch From OCR Provider

If you already make use of the services of an OCR provider but you’re not fully satisfied and thinking about a switch, you might wonder how to approach this. Well, first it’s wise to explore the market. Then you should contact different vendors and create a short list of those that potentially provide a better service than your current one. 

After that, the following steps can be conducted: 

1. Request a demo
2. Test the solution
3. Mapping out JSON fields
4. Integrate the solution
5. Start using the new OCR solution

1. Request a demo

This step is probably obvious to you, but before you commit to a new OCR provider, you should request a demo. That way you can get to know the vendor, ask questions, and find out if they can better solve your problem.

If you are happy with what you see and hear, the next step would be to test the solution.

2. Test the solution

When the demo is successful, we would advise testing the solution to see what the output of the new vendor looks like. Most likely, your old and new vendors are using different names for the fields that need to be extracted. 

It is important to look at that in the testing phase so that you can prepare for changes that have to be made. This brings us to the next step: Mapping out JSON fields. 

3. Mapping out JSON fields

As previously mentioned, the name of the output data (in JSON) will most likely differ from the name of the output of the new vendor. It is essential to internally connect the old names with the new name of the output field. 

That way, once in use, the OCR engine knows which data should be extracted and which output it should show. Then it is time to integrate the solution.

4. Integrate the solution

Integrating the solution into your current infrastructure shouldn’t be difficult, especially when you previously used an OCR API. If the vendor can offer you clear and easy-to-understand documentation, the integration process should be efficient and uncomplicated.

This part can be done in a matter of hours, depending on your company’s resources (i.e. skilled people and time). Once everything is set up and integrated, you are ready to use the new OCR software. 

All sounds pretty easy, right? The last remaining question is then which OCR provider to choose. Of course, we think Klippa would be a great option no matter the industry, but the decision is up to you. If you want to know why other companies have decided to switch to Klippa, keep on reading.

How Klippa’s OCR Software Stands Out from the Crowd

Klippa’s AI-driven OCR software can handle a variety of complex documents capable of extracting line items, tables, MRZ codes, and even signatures from documents. You can simply bulk upload your unstructured documents and get the data in various structured formats within seconds. It doesn’t encounter the limitations in document processing that many of the OCR solutions have, thanks to the addition of AI technologies.

If you want to break the barriers of data extraction and improve your entire document workflow, Klippa DocHorizon offers you a fully equipped Intelligent Document Processing low-code platform. You can:

• Create your own flows with an easy drag-and-drop user interface
• Indicate the tasks you wish to be carried out in the workflow
• Retrieve documents from existing databases, device folders, email, Google Drive, and many more
• Shorten document processing times with data entry automation
• Send data to existing applications with seamless document conversion
• Certify the authenticity of documents with document verification 
• Stay compliant with personal data protection requirements with smart data anonymization
• Ensure accurate document verification processes with document fraud detection
• Streamline the digital archive of your business with document classification and sorting 

Contact our experts for more insight into our OCR software capabilities or book a free demo down below! 

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