# Image to Text OCR – Bulk Extract Text from Images (`chris_elder/image-to-text-ocr`) Actor

Bulk OCR for images: extract text from PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF, TIFF, BMP, AVIF and SVG URLs in 100+ languages, with confidence, lines and word bounding boxes. No API key, no LLM. $4 per 1,000 images; failed and text-free images are free.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/chris_elder/image-to-text-ocr.md
- **Developed by:** [Chris Elder](https://apify.com/chris_elder) (community)
- **Categories:** AI, Developer tools, Automation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $3.00 / 1,000 image with text recogniseds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Image to Text OCR – extract text from images in bulk (100+ languages)

**Image to Text OCR** reads text from any number of images and returns it as clean, searchable data. Paste image links – **PNG, JPG/JPEG, WebP, GIF, TIFF, BMP, AVIF or SVG** – and get the **plain text**, a **confidence score**, and optionally every **line and word with its bounding box**. It runs the open-source **Tesseract OCR** engine inside the Actor, so there is **no API key, no LLM, no per-page cloud OCR bill**, and your images are not sent to any third-party AI service.

Images are **auto-rotated, contrast-normalised and upscaled** before recognition, which noticeably improves accuracy on phone photos, screenshots and small images.

### What can this OCR tool do?

- 🖼️ **Bulk image OCR** – hundreds or thousands of image URLs per run; download of the next image overlaps with OCR of the current one
- 🌍 **100+ languages** – English built in; `deu`, `fra`, `spa`, `ita`, `por`, `nld`, `pol`, `rus`, `ukr`, `ara`, `hin`, `jpn`, `kor`, `chi_sim`, `chi_tra`… and combinations like `eng+deu`
- 🧭 **Layout modes** – automatic (documents, screenshots), single block, single column, **sparse text** (signs, memes, UI, product photos), single line (labels, captions)
- 📐 **Lines & words with coordinates** in original-image pixels – for redaction, form parsing, highlighting or training data
- 🎯 **Confidence filter** – drop low-confidence words to remove noise from photos
- 🛠️ **Robust** – EXIF rotation, transparent PNGs, CMYK JPEGs, animated GIFs/multi-page TIFFs (first frame), 25 MB size cap, retries with back-off
- 💸 **You only pay for images where text was found** – broken links, non-images and blank images are free

### Who uses it?

- **Ops & finance teams** – receipts, invoices, delivery notes and screenshots → searchable text
- **E-commerce & marketing** – read text on product images, banners and ads (with permission) for QA and cataloguing
- **Developers & AI builders** – OCR step for RAG pipelines, agents and n8n/Make/Zapier automations
- **Researchers & archivists** – digitise scanned letters, posters and historical documents
- **Accessibility** – generate text for images that lack alt text

### How much does image OCR cost?

**$4 per 1,000 images with text** ($0.004 per image; $0.0035 on Silver, $0.003 on Gold+) plus $0.001 per run. **No charge** for images that fail to download, aren't images, exceed the size limit, or contain no text.

| Job | Price |
|---|---|
| 100 screenshots | ~$0.40 |
| 1,000 receipts | ~$4 |
| 10,000 product images | ~$40 |

Use **Max images** or **Max cost per run** to cap spending. Apify Free plan users get $5 of monthly credit – over 1,000 images.

> Working with **PDFs** (including scanned PDFs)? Use our [PDF to Markdown & Text Converter](https://apify.com/chris_elder/pdf-to-markdown) – it OCRs scanned pages automatically.

### How to use it

1. Click **Try for free**.
2. Add image URLs (or upload files to an Apify key-value store and paste their links).
3. Choose the **language** (e.g. `eng`, `deu`, `eng+fra`) and, for photos of signs/UI, the **Sparse text** layout.
4. Click **Start**. Export as JSON, CSV, Excel or via API.

#### Input example

```json
{
  "imageUrls": [
    { "url": "https://example.com/receipts/2026-10-01.jpg" },
    { "url": "https://example.com/screens/dashboard.png" }
  ],
  "language": "eng",
  "pageSegmentationMode": "auto",
  "includeLines": true,
  "includeWords": false,
  "minWordConfidence": 0
}
```

#### Output example

Real output from a 1961 typewritten letter (Wikimedia Commons) – note OCR is not perfect on old typewriter text ("Anns" for "Arms").

```json
{
  "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/…/Typewritten_letter_from_the_Savage_Arms_Parts_Department_(1961).jpg",
  "text": "Savage Anns Corporation\n\nMOF\nJanuary 26, 1961\n\nCLYDE WALSER\n\nBox 145\nFRANKLINTON, NORTH CAROLINA\n\nDear MR. WALSER: …",
  "confidence": 83,
  "hasText": true,
  "wordCount": 78,
  "lineCount": 21,
  "lines": [{ "text": "CLYDE WALSER", "confidence": 91, "bbox": { "x0": 297, "y0": 499, "x1": 413, "y1": 511 } }],
  "language": "eng",
  "width": 1920,
  "height": 1440,
  "format": "jpeg",
  "sizeBytes": 817937,
  "ocrMs": 2260,
  "charged": true
}
```

Failed items have an `error` field (e.g. `HTTP 404`, `Not a supported image`, `Image is larger than 25 MB`) and `"charged": false`. A `RUN_SUMMARY` record shows totals.

### Tips for best accuracy

- Text should be at least ~15 px high – the Actor upscales small images automatically.
- Use **Sparse text** for photos where text is scattered (signs, packaging, memes, app screenshots).
- Set the right **language** – accents and non-Latin scripts need their language model.
- Use `minWordConfidence: 40–60` to drop garbage from noisy photos.
- Handwriting is not supported well by Tesseract; printed and typed text works best.

### FAQ

**Is my data sent to an AI provider?** No. OCR runs locally inside the Actor with Tesseract (Apache-2.0). Only your image URLs are downloaded.

**Is it legal?** OCR of images you own or have permission to process is fine. Do not use it to extract personal data you have no lawful basis to process, and respect the terms of the sites hosting the images.

**Can I call it from code or AI agents?** Yes – Apify API, JavaScript/Python clients, webhooks, Zapier, Make, n8n, or as an MCP tool.

Questions or a language that doesn't work? Open an issue on the **Issues** tab.

### Need the data done for you?

If you'd rather not set up runs yourself, the UK company behind these tools (GPT Shop Ltd) offers a fixed-price done-for-you scrape. Tell us the website and the fields you need, and you get a clean CSV or Google Sheet within 48 hours of the confirmed brief, up to 5,000 rows, for £149 or $179. If we can't get the data, you're refunded in full. [See the done-for-you scraper service](https://sme-free-tools.pages.dev/done-for-you-scraper/?utm_source=apify\&utm_medium=readme\&utm_campaign=image-to-text-ocr)

# Actor input Schema

## `imageUrls` (type: `array`):

Public links to images (PNG, JPG/JPEG, WebP, GIF, TIFF, BMP, AVIF, SVG). Upload your own files to an Apify key-value store or any storage and paste the links. Only use images you have the right to process.

## `language` (type: `string`):

Tesseract language code, or several joined with + (e.g. eng, deu, fra, spa, ita, por, nld, pol, rus, ukr, ara, hin, jpn, kor, chi_sim, chi_tra, eng+deu). English is built in; other languages are downloaded once per run (a few seconds).

## `pageSegmentationMode` (type: `string`):

auto = documents and screenshots; single-block = one uniform block of text; single-column = one column of varying sizes; sparse-text = scattered text such as signs, memes, UI or product photos; single-line = one line (e.g. captions, labels).

## `preprocess` (type: `boolean`):

Auto-rotate (EXIF), grayscale, contrast-normalise and upscale small images. Improves accuracy on most photos and screenshots.

## `includeLines` (type: `boolean`):

Add every text line with its confidence and bounding box (pixels of the original image).

## `includeWords` (type: `boolean`):

Add every word with its confidence and bounding box. Useful for redaction, form parsing or highlighting.

## `minWordConfidence` (type: `integer`):

Drop words recognised with lower confidence (filters noise from photos). 0 keeps everything.

## `maxImages` (type: `integer`):

Process at most this many images in one run (caps cost).

## `maxImageSizeMb` (type: `integer`):

Larger files are skipped (not charged).

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "imageUrls": [
    {
      "url": "https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Typewritten_letter_from_the_Savage_Arms_Parts_Department_%281961%29.jpg/1920px-Typewritten_letter_from_the_Savage_Arms_Parts_Department_%281961%29.jpg"
    }
  ],
  "language": "eng",
  "pageSegmentationMode": "auto",
  "preprocess": true,
  "includeLines": true,
  "includeWords": false,
  "minWordConfidence": 0,
  "maxImages": 1000,
  "maxImageSizeMb": 25
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `overview` (type: `string`):

No description

## `summary` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "imageUrls": [
        {
            "url": "https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Typewritten_letter_from_the_Savage_Arms_Parts_Department_%281961%29.jpg/1920px-Typewritten_letter_from_the_Savage_Arms_Parts_Department_%281961%29.jpg"
        }
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("chris_elder/image-to-text-ocr").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "imageUrls": [{ "url": "https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Typewritten_letter_from_the_Savage_Arms_Parts_Department_%281961%29.jpg/1920px-Typewritten_letter_from_the_Savage_Arms_Parts_Department_%281961%29.jpg" }] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("chris_elder/image-to-text-ocr").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "imageUrls": [
    {
      "url": "https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Typewritten_letter_from_the_Savage_Arms_Parts_Department_%281961%29.jpg/1920px-Typewritten_letter_from_the_Savage_Arms_Parts_Department_%281961%29.jpg"
    }
  ]
}' |
apify call chris_elder/image-to-text-ocr --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,chris_elder/image-to-text-ocr"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/6tLFtizrq90tCEOqp/builds/ovRDNToHnN3Dh6NTd/openapi.json