7 Best OCR Software of 2023 (Free and PAID)
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There are many different types of OCR software available, and the best one for you will depend on your specific needs. In this guide, I ranked and reviewed the 7 best OCR software, along with my top 4 choices, so that you can pick the best one.
The 7 best OCR software are Nanonets, ReadIRIS, ABBYY FineReader, Kofax OmniPage, Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, Tesseract, and SimpleOCR.
Accounts
Free Trial
Projects
SSL
Storage
Domains
Sub-domains
Nanonets
FREE
1 user
Free and PAID versions
100+ languages
High accuracy
Best for individuals and businesses
ReadIRIS
$129
ONE TIME FEE
1 user
Free 30-day trial
130 languages
High accuracy
Best for individuals and businesses
ABBYY FineReader
$117
Yearly license fee
1 user
Free 7-day trial
198 languages
High accuracy
Best for individuals and businesses
Kofax OmniPage
$156
ONE TIME FEE
1user
Free 15-day trial
128 languages
High accuracy
Best for individuals and businesses
Contact me, if you want your product to be reviewed.
An OCR software is a computer program that recognizes text or other characters in images and converts the recognized text into machine-readable text. Oftentimes, it is used to make scanned documents searchable. It can also be used for data collection and other tasks like converting paper-based forms into digital forms.
It is critical to examine what features are most essential to you while selecting the best OCR software. Aside from the license fee, the accuracy level of the scanned documents and the languages supported are the two most important things to consider.
OCR software can be used by organizations to scan paper-based documents and send them as electronic documents with the same content and layout as the original paper-based document.
OCR solutions are used in various fields like data entry, office work, academic research, document management, etc. It is considered one of the major components that facilitates searching for documents with high accuracy and a key element in the digitization journey.
Let’s get started reviewing the best OCR software available and help you make the right decision.
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Comparison of Best OCR Software
LanguagesFree TrialPriceDeploymentRateNanonets100+ languagesFREEFREE version
Pro: $ 0.1 / pageCloud, Windows, and Mac9/10ReadIRIS130+ languages30-day$129Windows and Mac9/10ABBY FineReader198+ languages7-day$117 / yearWindows, iOS, Android, and Mac.9/10Kofax OmniPage128 languages15-day$156 one time licenseWindows8/10Adobe Acrobat Pro DC100+ languages7-dayStarting 14.99$/monthCloud8/10Tesseract 120+ languagesFREEFREEWindows7/10SimpleOCR100+ languagesFREEFREEWindows, and Mac7/10This table compares the 7 best OCR software in terms of languages supported, pricing, free trial and deployment model
What Is The Best OCR Software?
Here are my picks for the best OCR software for scanning documents to help you started.
Each of these OCR solutions has advantages and downsides; selecting the proper software necessitates careful planning and testing.
Nanonets uses artificial intelligence to extract data from documents and classify them without any human intervention. It is designed to be easy to use and accurate and can handle a variety of different languages.
This program can quickly validate data gathered from the document, and the AI learns and improves as your usage grows.
This tool can extract data from documents that are organized or semi-structured, such as invoices and purchase orders.
Top firms that employ Nanonets include P&G, Deloitte, EY, TOYOTA, and many others. They provide a free edition for beginners (process 100 pages) as well as a 7-day free trial.
In terms of deployments, this best OCR engine is available in the cloud, on Windows, and on Mac and is considered one of the best OCR software for invoices.
Why I Picked Nanonets: Nanonets is my personal favorite OCR engine. It combines high speed of information extraction and with super high accuracy. With each release of new version, they are improving the engine and supporting more languages.
Key Features:
- Easy-to-use interface
- Excellent customer service/support
- High accuracy data extraction rate
- Comprehensible technical documentation
- Quick and accurate OCR annotation
- Integration available through APIs
Pricing:
It comes with 3 editions
- Starter: FREE version
- Pro: $ 0.1 / page
- Enterprise: You need to contact sales
Nanonets pricing table
ReadIRIS is a powerful and accurate OCR engine that can be used to convert scanned documents and images into editable and searchable text. It offers a wide range of features and options, making it a versatile and robust OCR solution for a variety of needs.
ReadIRIS considered one of the best OCR software for scanned documents and invoices. It is a fast and accurate optical character recognition software that can recognize text in over 130 languages. It is easy to use and can be integrated into your workflow.
It has a multitude of options for converting scanned files into editable documents as well as modifying PDF files.
This document digitization software works on both Windows and Mac, and you can try out all of the features for free for 30 days.
Why I Picked ReadIRIS: The most important factors to consider when choosing an OCR software are high speed, high accuracy, languages supported, and easy to use API for integration. And it did an amazing job supporting these factors.
Key Features:
- 20% faster document processing
- Edit texts embedded in your images with OCR
- Convert Microsoft Office documents to PDF
- Annotate and comment
- Protect and sign PDFs
- Integration with printers (Twain scanners)
Pricing:
It comes with 3 different plans
- Readiris PDF 17: $129
- Readiris Pro 17: $149
- Readiris Corporate 17: $199
ReadIRIS pricing plans
ABBYY FineReader PDF is the best OCR engine that can help you convert PDFs into editable text files with ease. This powerful tool leverages AI-based OCR technology that can recognize text in over 198 languages, making it perfect for converting PDFs from all over the world.
Not only does it make converting PDFs easy, but it also offers a number of features that can make your life easier, such as the ability to convert scanned PDFs, the ability to convert PDFs with images, and the ability to convert password-protected PDFs.
This OCR solution has been in the market for 28 years with over 100 million installations including 17.000 corporate users.
This OCR application includes a 7-day free trial for individuals and a 30-day free trial for enterprises, as well as support for four distinct platforms, including Windows, iOS, Android, and Mac.
ABBYY’s AI-based OCR and document-conversion technologies ensure high levels of accuracy and maintain layout and structure for further effortless editing.
This document digitization software is best for individuals and enterprises and is considered the best OCR software for invoices processing.
Why I Picked ABBY: ABBY is a very well-known optical character recognition software that has been available in the market for over 20 years. With each release, they keep on innovating and lately with the addition of the artificial intelligence capabilities made it a super powerful information extractor.
Key Features:
- Create, edit, and organize PDFs
- Collaborate on and approve PDFs
- High-quality editing and document comparison tools
- Sophisticated and flexible OCR settings/adjustments
- High levels of accuracy
Cons:
- Small fonts processing needs improvements
- Conversion to MS Word and Excel needs improvements
- Initial setup can be difficult and complex
Pricing:
They have 3 different plans including:
- FineReader PDF Standard for Windows: $117/year
- FineReader PDF Corporate for Windows: $165/year
- FineReader PDF for Mac: $69/year
ABBYY FineReader Pricing
Kofax OmniPage is the world’s most accurate OCR engine. It turns paper and PDF documents into digital files you can edit, search and share. It delivers up to 99% accuracy, making it the perfect tool for anyone who needs to turn paper documents into digital files.
With OmniPage, you can scan and convert documents into a variety of formats, including PDF, Word, Excel, and more. This solution also includes powerful features for OCR (optical character recognition) and document security. You can easily convert paper documents into digital format, making it easy to store, share, and manage your documents.
OmniPage supports 124 languages with a high level of accuracy. The most appealing feature is that they charge a one-time cost per license, which will undoubtedly save you money in the short and long run.
This document digitization software is best for individuals and small businesses. It offers a 15-day free trial.
Key Features:
- High percentage accuracy of OCR
- Scan and create fillable documents
- Over 120 supported languages
- Batch files support
- OmniPage Server to integrate with different applications
Why I Picked Kofax: Aside from the capabilities, Kofax is relatively cheap when it comes to processing huge amount of documents.
Cons:
- Windows is the only platform supported
Pricing
They offer 4 plans including
- OmniPage Standard: $156 one time fee
- OmniPage Ultimate: $524 one time fee
- OmniPage Capture SDK: starting at $4999
- OmniPage Server: Contact for pricing
Kofax OmniPage Pricing
Adobe Acrobat Pro DC is a program that allows you to convert scanned documents and images into editable and searchable text. It uses optical character recognition (OCR) to recognize text in images, making it easy to edit and search for specific information.
Adobe has long been known for producing high-quality software, and Acrobat Pro DC is no exception. It has several features, such as the ability to edit PDFs, add comments, identify text, convert Microsoft Office documents, electronically sign PDFs, and so on.
Adobe’s PDF file viewer already offers a multitude of functionality, and the OCR tool is available for any device.
This document digitization software comes with a 7-day trial period so you can see how the program works and offers a 60% discount for students and teachers.
Key Features:
- Powerful PDF editing tools
- High OCR accuracy rate
- Digital signature support
- Major platforms are supported
- Cloud-based commenting and sharing
Acrobat pro dc features
Pricing:
Individuals Acrobat Pro DC license costs $14.99 per user per month.
Tesseract is the best free OCR converter for various operating systems. It is free software released under the Apache License. Tesseract is considered one of the most accurate OCR engines currently available.
Tesseract OCR solution supports over 120 languages and is capable of processing right-to-left written languages such as Hebrew, Arabic, and others.
Aside from its high accuracy rate, it may be integrated with program that your business is attempting to create or automate, making OCRing an automated task that requires no human participation.
We have personally tested this OCR software several times and can confirm that it performs well.
The command-line interface is used to run Tesseract. While Tesseract does not come with a graphical user interface, there are numerous other projects that do.
Why I Picked Tesseract: I personally used Tesseract on one of the software for organizing documents for enterprises and we needed an open source OCR engine that is quite fast and with high accuracy. The integration level is not the best but it does the job.
Key Features:
- FREE, no licensing fees
- Can be integrated with your in hose developed apps
- Supports right to left languages
- High accuracy rate
Cons:
- The most significant downside of this tool is that it lacks an interface by default. It is command-line based.
SimpleOCR is the world’s most popular and easiest to use OCR software for scanned documents. With SimpleOCR you can convert scanned images of text into editable and searchable text files in over 130 languages. It has a despeckle or “noisy document” option that improves its accuracy.
This OCR program is a popular free OCR converter that has hundreds of thousands of users throughout the world and supports over 100 languages including the right to left languages. It also provides a royalty-free OCR SDK for developers to use in their custom applications.
Individuals looking for the best free OCR software should use this.
Key Features:
- For both Windows and Mac
- Made with a clean UI and simple navigation
- Batch scanning of files
- Zone OCR
- Supports over 100 languages, even most dead ones
- Completely free, you can use it for any purpose.
Pricing:
SimpleOCR solution is available for free for both commercial and non-commercial use.
What is OCR software?
An OCR software is a technology that helps to recognize and read printed text from images. It is used in many applications such as document scanning, converting paper-based documents into digital format, reading of scanned images and so on.
It can also be used for tasks like data entry or form filling where user needs to fill information from the scanned images.
The main advantage of OCR over other optical character recognition methods is its ability to recognize text even if it has been distorted by scanning errors or other problems.
What is the best OCR software for Windows?
The best OCR software for Windows is SimpleOCR. It has exceptional precision and speed, supports more than 130 languages, including those written from right to left, and is very simple to use.
Which OCR is best for handwriting?
We have tested most of these engines to see their capabilites concerning extracting data from handwritten paragraphs.
The best OCR for handwriting extraction of information is SimpleOCR. This free engine was able to understand and capture text from handwritten images with a high accuracy rate.
How good is OCR?
OCR is a computer program which can automatically read text and convert it into digital text. It has been around for a long time and is used in many different industries, such as law enforcement, medical transcription, or even in the publishing industry.
The accuracy of OCR software varies depending on the type of document being scanned. For example, if you are scanning a book with a lot of pictures or diagrams, then it will be more difficult to produce an accurate conversion than if you were scanning a document with only text.
Conclusion
We went over the list of the top OCR software on the market in this article. Remember that before deciding which tool to use, you should test it in your setting, whether personal or business, to determine if it meets your level of accuracy demands.
FAQ
What is the best OCR software on the market?
The best OCR software in the market is ABBYY FineReader PDF. It supports all major languages with a high accuracy rate and is considerably fast.
Is there a better OCR than Tesseract?
The Tesseract engine can be used to process bitmap images and convert them to text. It is one of the most popular OCR engines in the world with a large community of developers contributing to its success.
