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PDF OCR

Extract plain text from scanned PDF documents with built-in Tesseract or the optional high-accuracy RapidOCR runtime and pinned PP-OCR ONNX models. Select up to 50 pages per request, choose a language hint, and keep the PDF and extracted text on your self-hosted server.

Deploy with DockerView Source

Features

  • Built-in Fast Tesseract tier plus optional RapidOCR Balanced and Best tiers
  • Page-range selection for up to 50 pages per request
  • Automatic, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean modes
  • Plain-text output with page boundaries
  • Portable Linux amd64/arm64 accurate runtime that also works on NVIDIA hosts
  • Local processing without a third-party OCR API

What you can do

  • Digitizing archived paper contracts for full-text search in a document management system
  • Extracting invoice line items from scanned supplier PDFs for bookkeeping import
  • Making legacy research papers searchable without uploading them to third-party services
  • Converting scanned government forms into selectable text for accessibility compliance

AI that runs on your hardware. No cloud APIs, no usage limits.

Unlike cloud AI services, SnapOtter's PDF OCR runs the ML model directly on your server. Your files are processed locally with no data sent to external APIs. No per-file fees, no rate limits, no privacy concerns. Deploy once with Docker and use it as much as you need.

Frequently asked questions

How accurate is the OCR on low-quality scans?
The AI model handles noise, skew, and low resolution well, though very degraded scans may need preprocessing. All recognition runs locally on your self-hosted instance, so you can re-run with adjusted settings without usage limits.
Does it support non-English documents?
Yes. Choose automatic recognition or an explicit English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, or Korean hint. Processing happens on your server without an external OCR API.
Can I process confidential legal or medical PDFs?
OCR processing is local, so SnapOtter does not send the PDF or extracted text to an OCR service. This can support data-residency and privacy requirements, while deployment security and regulatory compliance remain the operator's responsibility.

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