Best Open-Source OCR Software 2026: 6 Options Compared

OCR, optical character recognition, turns pictures of text into editable text, and the open-source world is mostly libraries and command-line tools rather than point-and-click apps. Tesseract is the standard engine, with LSTM recognition and support for more than 100 languages. OCRmyPDF wraps an OCR engine around scanned PDFs and produces a searchable PDF, which is what most office users actually want. PaddleOCR, EasyOCR and docTR are Python toolkits built on neural networks; they handle messy photos, screenshots and varied layouts better than classic engines but need Python knowledge and, for the best speed, a GPU. Stirling PDF includes OCR among its dozens of PDF tools in a friendlier web interface. If you have a stack of scanned invoices, run OCRmyPDF. If you are building an app that reads receipts or signs, evaluate PaddleOCR or docTR on your own images, because accuracy depends heavily on the data. Be wary of claims about benchmark scores; results vary by language, scan quality and handwriting. Handwriting remains the weak point for all of them. Licences below come from the repositories as of the check date, and no accuracy tests were run for this guide.

Tesseract OCR

Apache-2.0 engine with more than 100 languages out of the box. The baseline for scanned documents; weaker on photos with perspective and clutter.

Price: Free (Free open-source OCR engine; 100+ languages; command-line and library only, no GUI) (Tesseract OCR pricing, checked 2026-10-24).

Platforms and license: Windows, macOS, Linux. Apache-2.0 (open source) (license source).

Project activity: 77.2k GitHub stars · latest release 5.5.3 (Jul 24, 2026) · last commit Oct 27, 2026

Best for: Clean scans and printed pages.

OCRmyPDF

MPL-2.0 command-line tool that adds a text layer to scanned PDFs so they become searchable. Uses an OCR engine underneath.

Price: Free (Free; adds a searchable text layer to scanned PDFs, needs Tesseract and Ghostscript installed) (OCRmyPDF pricing, checked 2026-10-24).

Platforms and license: Linux, Windows, macOS, FreeBSD. MPL-2.0 (open source) (license source).

Project activity: 35.2k GitHub stars · latest release v17.13.0 (Sep 28, 2026) · last commit Oct 25, 2026

Best for: Batch-converting scanned PDFs.

Worth knowing: Scriptable command-line tool; Docker images for x64 and ARM.

PaddleOCR

Apache-2.0 toolkit that claims support for 100+ languages and structured document output. Heavier to install than Tesseract.

Price: Free (Free open-source OCR toolkit; 100+ languages) (PaddleOCR pricing, checked 2026-10-24).

Platforms and license: Linux, Windows, macOS. Apache-2.0 (open source) (license source).

Project activity: 91.8k GitHub stars · latest release v3.7.0 (Jun 11, 2026) · last commit Sep 16, 2026

Best for: Mixed-layout documents and Asian languages.

Worth knowing: Python toolkit outputting JSON/Markdown; CPU and GPU.

EasyOCR

Apache-2.0 Python library with 80+ languages and a short API. The last commit on GitHub was in December 2025.

Price: Free (Free and open source Python OCR library) (EasyOCR pricing, checked 2026-10-24).

Platforms and license: Python library. Apache-2.0 (open source) (license source).

Project activity: 30.1k GitHub stars · latest release v1.7.2 (Sep 24, 2024) · last commit Dec 5, 2025

Best for: Quick Python prototypes.

Worth knowing: README: 80+ supported languages. Last commit on GitHub was December 2025. License taken from the repository metadata and LICENSE file; description from the project README. No paid plan was checked.

docTR

Apache-2.0 library that does text detection first and then recognition, with pretrained models. Aimed at developers.

Price: Free (Free and open source document text recognition library) (docTR pricing, checked 2026-10-24).

Platforms and license: Python library. Apache-2.0 (open source) (license source).

Project activity: 6.4k GitHub stars · latest release v1.1.0 (Aug 21, 2026) · last commit Oct 27, 2026

Best for: Custom pipelines in Python.

Worth knowing: README describes a two-stage approach of text detection then recognition. License taken from the repository metadata and LICENSE file; description from the project README. No paid plan was checked.

Stirling PDF

MIT with some directories under separate licences. Includes OCR among 50+ PDF tools in a web or desktop interface, no code required.

Price: Free (Free plan at $0 with no card: web, desktop and self-hosted use, 60+ PDF tools and 1,000 monthly credits); paid from $99 per month (Team, 100 users) (Stirling PDF pricing, checked 2026-10-23).

Platforms and license: Web browser, Desktop app, Self-hosted (Docker). MIT, with some directories under separate licenses (open source) (license source).

Project activity: 95.2k GitHub stars · latest release v3.2.2 (Oct 24, 2026) · last commit Oct 27, 2026

Best for: OCR with a graphical interface.

Worth knowing: LICENSE file says MIT except app/proprietary and other directories with their own licenses. Repository README lists edit, merge, split, sign, redact, convert, OCR and compress.

Which one to pick

• You have hundreds of scanned PDFs to make searchable: OCRmyPDF
• You need a developer-friendly baseline for printed text: Tesseract OCR
• Your images are messy photos with varied layouts: PaddleOCR
• You want to click through a UI instead of writing code: Stirling PDF