* * * CHEAP OCR API * * *
Cheap OCR API.
You searched for a cheap OCR API; it says penny right there in our name. $0.75 per 1,000 pages — half the big clouds' list price — with no minimums, no seats, no platform fee, and the first 1,000 pages free every month.
START FREE — 100 PAGES
$0.75 / 1,000 PAGES
1,333 PAGES PER DOLLAR · NO CREDIT CARD
01 / TRY IT
ONE ENDPOINT.
POST a file, get JSON back — the extracted text, per page and joined. PDF, PNG, JPEG, WebP or TIFF.
curl https://api.pennyocr.com/v1/ocr \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $PENNYOCR_API_KEY" \
-F "file=@invoice.pdf"
# $0.75 per 1,000 pages, first 100 free02 / USE CASES
WHERE THE MONEY GOES.
THE PRICE
$0.00075 per page, metered. A million pages costs $750 instead of $1,500.
NO FINE PRINT
No tiers to model, no committed use, no per-seat pricing, no 'contact sales' wall.
WHY IT'S CHEAP
Efficient open vision-language models on commodity GPUs and a ruthlessly simple stack — not a stripped-down engine.
STILL GOOD
Cheap doesn't mean 2009-era OCR: modern VLMs handle tables, skew and handwriting.
03 / PRICE CHECK
HALF THE PRICE OF THE BIG CLOUDS.
Per 1,000 pages, public list prices, first tier.
PENNYOCR$0.75
AWS TEXTRACT$1.50
GOOGLE CLOUD VISION$1.50
AZURE DOC INTELLIGENCE$1.50
YOU KEEP50%
WHAT'S THE CATCH?
There isn't one. We run efficient open models on commodity GPUs and don't have an enterprise sales team to feed. The savings go into the price.
HOW DOES $0.75 COMPARE EXACTLY?
AWS Textract, Google Cloud Vision and Azure Document Intelligence all list around $1.50 per 1,000 pages at the first tier. PennyOCR is $0.75, every tier.
IS THERE A FREE TIER?
Yes: 100 pages free every month, no credit card. Cheap has a free sample.
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