* * * PRICE CHECK * * *
PennyOCR vs Azure Document Intelligence.
Azure Document Intelligence (née Form Recognizer) spans OCR through prebuilt document models. For the core job — text out of documents — here's the comparison, list prices as of August 2026.
| PENNYOCR | AZURE DOCUMENT INTELLIGENCE | |
|---|---|---|
| PRICE / 1,000 PAGES | $0.75, every tier | $1.50 (Read, first 1M pages) |
| TABLES / LAYOUT | Included — HTML tables inside markdown | Layout model at ~$10.00 / 1,000 pages |
| FREE TIER | 100 pages / month, forever | 500 pages / month on the F0 tier |
| SETUP | Email code → API key → curl. ~2 minutes | Azure subscription, resource creation, keys + endpoint |
| OUTPUT | Markdown or plain text, reading order preserved | JSON lines/words (Read) or structured layout JSON |
| BILLING | Prepaid credits, never expire | Postpaid on your Azure bill |
| DATA RETENTION | Zero retention by default | Data processed per Microsoft product terms; retention configurable |
Competitor figures are public list prices and terms as of August 2026 — check their pricing pages for changes.
CHOOSE PENNYOCR IF…
Choose PennyOCR when you want document text and tables at half the Read price (and 13× cheaper than Layout for tables), with a 2-minute integration.
CHOOSE AZURE IF…
Choose Azure when you need its prebuilt models (invoices, IDs, W-2s) with field-level extraction, or you're committed to the Microsoft stack.
FAIR QUESTIONS
DOES PENNYOCR HAVE PREBUILT MODELS LIKE AZURE?
No — one general endpoint that handles receipts, invoices, contracts and scans as text/markdown. Field-level structured extraction is on our roadmap; for many pipelines, markdown + your own parsing is simpler anyway.
HOW DOES TABLE PRICING REALLY COMPARE?
Tables come standard in PennyOCR markdown at $0.75/1k. On Azure, table structure means the Layout model at roughly $10/1k — about 13× more.
WHAT ABOUT COMPLIANCE?
We're a young product: zero data retention by default and prepaid billing, but if you need SOC2/HIPAA paperwork today, the big clouds are ahead of us. Ask us where we are: hello@pennyocr.com.