Image OCR Scraper

Extract text from any image — bulk OCR for screenshots, scanned documents, receipts, signs, menus, business cards, and photos. Supports 109 languages with text, table, formula, and chart recognition.

What you get

• Clean extracted text in Markdown format (preserves headings, lists, tables) or JSON (with bounding boxes for each text block)
• Accurate recognition powered by PaddleOCR — handles printed and handwritten text, multiple languages mixed in one image, rotated text, and low-quality scans
• One output record per image with the extracted text and source URL
• Bulk processing — pass up to 50 image URLs and get all text in a single run
• Export to JSON or CSV directly from the Apify console

Use cases

• Document digitization — turn scanned PDFs, receipts, and invoices into searchable text
• Data entry automation — pull structured data from forms, business cards, and ID documents
• Screenshot analysis — extract text from app screenshots, error messages, or social media images
• Translation pipelines — OCR a foreign-language image, then run the text through a translator
• Accessibility — generate text alternatives for image-based content
• Compliance & search — make image-heavy archives full-text searchable

How to use

1. Paste one or more image URLs into the Images field (or upload files directly)
2. Choose Output Format — Markdown for human-readable text, JSON for structured data with positions
3. Click Run — extracted text appears in the Dataset tab when complete
4. Export results as JSON or CSV, or connect to downstream actors via the Apify API

Output format

Each dataset record:

{
  "inputImageUrl": "https://example.com/receipt.jpg",
  "text": "# Receipt\n\n**Store:** Example Mart\n**Date:** 2026-05-10\n\n| Item | Price |\n|------|-------|\n| Coffee | $4.50 |\n| Bagel | $3.25 |\n\n**Total:** $7.75",
  "outputFormat": "markdown",
  "status": "success",
  "error": null
}

When outputFormat is json, the text field contains structured JSON with text blocks and bounding-box coordinates instead of Markdown.

Input options

Field	Type	Description
Images	URL list	One or more http/https image URLs or base64 data URIs
Upload Images	File upload	Upload images directly from your computer
Output Format	Select	Markdown (clean readable text) or JSON (structured with bounding boxes) — default: Markdown

Limits

• Maximum 50 images per run
• Each image must be a publicly accessible URL or a base64 data URI
• Processing time is typically under 1 second per image
• Supported languages: 109 including English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, and more