Image OCR Extractor

Extract text from image and PDF scans for teams indexing screenshots and documents.

Quick start

Use this small, public image containing printed English text:

{"urls":["https://jeroen.github.io/images/testocr.png"],"language":"eng","limit":1}

One dataset item from this input, with OCR text and confidence varying slightly by Tesseract version:

{"index":1,"url":"https://jeroen.github.io/images/testocr.png","ok":true,"text":"This is a lot of 12 point text to test the ocr code and see if it works on all types of file format. The quick brown dog jumped over the lazy fox. The quick brown dog jumped over the lazy fox. The quick brown dog jumped over the lazy fox. The quick brown dog jumped over the lazy fox.","word_count":60,"char_count":284,"confidence_score":96.0,"auto_enhanced":false,"language":"eng","contains_numbers":true,"contains_emails":[],"contains_urls":[],"text_density":"medium","tables_detected":0,"tables":[],"total_pages":null,"pages":null,"error":null,"changed":null}

ok reports download and OCR success; text contains recognized words. word_count and char_count measure the recognized text. confidence_score is Tesseract's average word confidence; auto_enhanced shows whether a second preprocessing pass was used. error describes a failed item.

Limits

Unreachable or unsupported image URLs produce error items. OCR quality depends on resolution, orientation, and font; handwriting and complex layouts may be unreliable. PDF processing depends on page count and can take longer than a single image. Use limit to bound a batch.

Pricing

Pay-per-event:

Event	Price
Actor start (charged by Apify, one per GB of run memory)	$0.001
Image/PDF successfully OCR-processed	$0.002

The first 5 successful images per account are free (once, not per run); failed items are never charged. Example: 50 images = 50 × $0.002 = $0.10 plus the start fee (after the free 5 are used up).

Use from AI agents (MCP)

Connect your agent to Apify's official MCP server with an Apify token. Select the Actor tool gochujang/image-ocr-extractor, pass the Quick start JSON as input, then retrieve its dataset items through the MCP server. No separate gateway is needed.

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What does Image OCR Extractor do?

Image OCR Extractor is an image text extraction API that converts any image — screenshot, invoice, receipt, form, or photo — into structured text using Tesseract OCR. Submit one image or a batch of up to 50 (PNG, JPG, WebP, TIFF, BMP), and receive extracted text plus a per-image confidence score. No API key, no GPU, no setup required.

This actor runs the full extract text from images pipeline automatically: download, preprocess, Tesseract recognition, and structured JSON output. When confidence is low, it retries with threshold preprocessing to improve accuracy — so you get the best result without any manual tuning.

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Why use Image OCR Extractor?

1. Invoice and receipt digitization — Extract totals, line items, vendor names, and dates from receipt photos or scanned invoices to feed accounting workflows automatically.
2. Screenshot text extraction — Turn UI screenshots, error messages, and social media screenshots into searchable, indexable text in seconds.
3. Multilingual document processing — Support for 100+ languages including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, German, French, and Spanish, with combined-language mode for bilingual documents.
4. Form and survey digitization — Process handwritten or typed paper forms from scanned documents without manual data entry.
5. Batch data pipeline integration — OCR entire image archives and feed the output into LLMs, databases, or search indexes programmatically via the Apify API.

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How to use Image OCR Extractor

1. Open the actor on Apify Store and click Try for free.
2. Paste one or more image URLs into the url or urls input field.
3. Select a language code (default: eng) and preprocessing mode (default: grayscale).
4. Click Start — results arrive in seconds.
5. Fetch structured JSON from the Apify dataset or connect via API for automation.

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Input

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
url	string	—	Single image URL. Used when urls is empty.
urls	array	—	Batch list of image URLs (up to 50 per run).
language	string	eng	Tesseract language code: eng, deu, fra, spa, jpn, chi_sim, kor, or combined eng+deu.
preprocessing	string	grayscale	Image preprocessing: none, grayscale, or threshold (binarize).
pageSegMode	integer	3	Tesseract PSM: 3 = auto, 6 = block, 7 = line, 8 = word, 11 = sparse.
limit	integer	50	Max images to process per run (hard cap: 200).

Supported URL types: direct image links, Google Drive share links, and Dropbox share links are all automatically resolved — no manual conversion needed.

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Output

Each processed image returns one JSON object:

{
  "index": 1,
  "url": "https://example.com/invoice.png",
  "ok": true,
  "text": "Invoice #2024-001\nBill To: Acme Corp\nTotal: $1,250.00",
  "word_count": 9,
  "confidence_score": 87.4,
  "auto_enhanced": false,
  "language": "eng",
  "error": null
}

auto_enhanced: true means low confidence was detected on the first pass and the actor automatically re-ran OCR with threshold preprocessing. error is populated only when the image could not be processed at all.

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Data fields

Field	Type	Description
index	integer	Position in the input list (1-based)
url	string	Source image URL
ok	boolean	Whether OCR succeeded
text	string	Extracted text (newline-separated)
word_count	integer	Number of words extracted
confidence_score	float	Tesseract average confidence score (0–100)
auto_enhanced	boolean	Whether automatic threshold preprocessing was applied
language	string	Language code used
error	string or null	Error message if OCR failed

Confidence score guide:

Range	Meaning
85–100	High quality, likely accurate
60–84	Moderate — review critical fields
< 60	Low — actor automatically retries with threshold preprocessing

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FAQ

Does the OCR API support handwriting? Tesseract performs best on printed text. Handwriting recognition is possible but accuracy varies. Use preprocessing: threshold and pageSegMode: 6 for best results on handwritten forms.

Can I extract text from images with dark backgrounds or colored overlays? Yes. Use preprocessing: grayscale (the default) for colored or photographic backgrounds. For text printed on a white background, threshold gives sharper binarized results.

How accurate is image text extraction? For clean, high-resolution images with standard fonts, confidence scores typically land in the 85–95 range. Low-quality photos or stylized fonts may score lower, but the automatic enhancement retry improves results without manual effort.

Disclaimer: OCR accuracy depends on image quality, resolution, and font type. This actor is not intended for medical, legal, or financial document processing where 100% accuracy is required. Always verify extracted text for critical use cases.

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Works Great With

Build a complete document processing pipeline with these actors from the same author:

• PDF Text & Table Extractor — Extract text from PDF documents in the same pipeline. When your input is a mix of image files and PDFs, run both actors together — images go to OCR Extractor, PDFs go to the PDF actor — and merge results in a single dataset.
• DOCX Text Extractor — For Word documents. Complete the trifecta: images (this actor), PDFs, and Word docs can all be normalized to plain text in one automated pipeline.
• Excel & CSV Extractor — For spreadsheets. Digitize entire document archives — scan OCR images, extract PDFs, parse Excel files — and feed all output into the same downstream database or LLM.

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Schedule This Actor

Automate recurring document processing — run on a schedule to process new files as they arrive.

Apify Console → Schedules → + New Schedule:

Field	Value
Actor	Image OCR Extractor
Cron	0 9 * * 1-5 (weekdays 9:00 UTC)
Input	{"urls": ["https://your-storage/latest-scan.png"], "language": "eng", "preprocessing": "grayscale"}

Connect the output to a webhook (Zapier, Make, n8n) under Integrations to push extracted text directly to Google Sheets, Notion, or your database.

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Related actors

• PDF Text & Table Extractor — PDF version with table detection, password-protected PDFs, batch processing
• DOCX Text Extractor — Word document extraction, same URL/Drive/Dropbox pattern
• Excel & CSV Extractor — .xlsx/.xls/.csv to JSON, full row/column structure
• Web Page to Markdown Converter — HTML text extraction

Feedback

Leave a review on Apify Store

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Keywords: image OCR, Tesseract OCR, PDF to text, screenshot OCR, receipt digitizer, document scanner, image text extraction, XLSX OCR, table extraction, multi-language OCR, PNG to text, JPG OCR, document automation