OCR With Google AI (original) (raw)

OCR (Optical Character Recognition)

OCR (Optical Character Recognition) with world-class Google Cloud AI

Extract text and data from images and documents, turn unstructured content into business-ready structured data, and unlock valuable insights.

Integrate OCR functionalities into your applications through APIs.

New customers get $300 in free credits on signup to apply towards document summarizing OCR solutions.

Overview

What is OCR?

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a foundational technology behind the conversion of typed, handwritten or printed text from images into machine-encoded text.

What types of OCR does Google Cloud offer?

Google Cloud offers two types of OCR: OCR for documents and OCR for images and videos.

While they share a foundational technology, Document AI is a document understanding platform optimized for document processing. Its Custom Extractor is powered by GenAI that processes both generic and domain-specific documents with higher accuracy and faster, without the need to choose a specialized processor.

Cloud Vision, is commonly used to detect text, handwriting and a wide range of objects from images and videos.

How does OCR work at Google Cloud?

Google Cloud powers OCR with best-in-class AI. It goes beyond traditional text recognition by understanding, organizing and enriching data, ultimately generating business-ready insights.

It gives you the flexibility to either use the OCR tools as a unified suite for streamlined efficiency (e.g. Document AI), or simply call the relevant APIs directly available in Google Cloud console to integrate OCR functionalities into your applications.

How Google Cloud AI and OCR work together?

All the OCR solutions mentioned above give you access to pre-trained ML models that you can deploy right away through an API, or uptrain to improve accuracy for your specific needs.

You can also train your own custom models with AutoML - no machine learning expertise needed.

Check out AutoML documentation on building custom ML models.

Which OCR solution is right for me?

If you are looking to analyze a document, or build an automated document processing pipeline, use Document AI - it takes care of the entire workflow all in one place, from understanding documents to search, store, govern and manage the documents alongside extracted data.

If you want to analyze and process images, use Cloud Vision alongside other Google Cloud products for best results - check the Common Uses section for details and quickstart guides.

Both APIs are free to try with a Google Cloud account.

Compare OCR offerings

Best for

General text-extraction use cases that require low latency and high capacity.

Key features

Pre-built features like image labeling, face & landmark detection, OCR, safe search.

Best for

Digitize text from documents (PDFs, scanned documents as images, or Microsoft DocX files).

Key features

Extract text in 200+ languages, 50 handwritten languages.

Add-ons to recognize math formulas, styles, etc.

Best for

Extract, classify and split any documents with generative ai (foundational models)

Key features

Custom Extractor: uses foundational models to quickly create parsers without extensive data labeling or training.

Custom classifier and document splitter for efficient processing.

Best for

Text and field extraction from domain-specific documents.

Key features

How It Works

To understand and process documents, use Document AI.

For images, we recommend using Cloud Vision**.**

Both give you access to pre-trained ML models that you can deploy as-is through APIs or uptrain. You can also train your own custom models from scratch with AutoML - no ML expertise needed.

First 1000 units every month are free when you use Cloud Vision or Document OCR - try it with a simple API call.

How Cloud Vision recognizes and classifies images

Demo

See Document OCR in action with your own documents

Try the Document AI API with a simple drag-and-drop.

Common Uses

Build an end-to-end document solution

How-tos

Build a document processing and understanding pipeline

Powered by GenAI, Document AI delivers great accuracy in extracting data from documents of varying layouts and quality. You can connect it with Cloud Storage so your unstructured documents have enterprise-grade compliance. BigQuery helps batch process and analyze the extracted data any way you like. With Looker, you can easily build visualizations based on your BigQuery tables. Vertex AI Search enables you to query and search your documents in Cloud Storage, conversationally or traditionally.

• Hands-on Lab: Build an End-to-End Data Capture Pipeline using Document AI and Cloud Functions

It takes 60-90 minutes to set up the entire pipeline as seen, the Document AI portion takes 10 minutes.

How-tos

Build a document processing and understanding pipeline

Powered by GenAI, Document AI delivers great accuracy in extracting data from documents of varying layouts and quality. You can connect it with Cloud Storage so your unstructured documents have enterprise-grade compliance. BigQuery helps batch process and analyze the extracted data any way you like. With Looker, you can easily build visualizations based on your BigQuery tables. Vertex AI Search enables you to query and search your documents in Cloud Storage, conversationally or traditionally.

• Hands-on Lab: Build an End-to-End Data Capture Pipeline using Document AI and Cloud Functions

It takes 60-90 minutes to set up the entire pipeline as seen, the Document AI portion takes 10 minutes.

Image tagging, processing and search

How-tos

Additional resources

Use Cloud Vision API and AutoML to tag and process images

Image tagging is also referred to as image labeling.

Cloud Vision API can identify and label general objects, landmarks, locations, logos, activities, animal species, products, and more in an image. Once the images are tagged with the detected labels, image search, processing and management are automated and easier.

If you need targeted custom labels, use Cloud AutoML to train a custom ML model.

To use Google OCR technologies on premise, use OCR On-Prem, available in the Cloud Marketplace.

• Deploy in console: Event-driven image processing using Cloud Functions and Cloud Vision
• Skills Boost labs: Image processing
• How-to guides: Cloud Vision API

How-tos

Use Cloud Vision API and AutoML to tag and process images

Image tagging is also referred to as image labeling.

Cloud Vision API can identify and label general objects, landmarks, locations, logos, activities, animal species, products, and more in an image. Once the images are tagged with the detected labels, image search, processing and management are automated and easier.

If you need targeted custom labels, use Cloud AutoML to train a custom ML model.

To use Google OCR technologies on premise, use OCR On-Prem, available in the Cloud Marketplace.

• Deploy in console: Event-driven image processing using Cloud Functions and Cloud Vision
• Skills Boost labs: Image processing
• How-to guides: Cloud Vision API

Additional resources

Pricing example

To run a basic image processing pipeline that detects labels as shown on the right, your monthly cost would be $27.36.

You can check the usage assumptions made to arrive at this number in the pricing calculator.

First 1,000 units per month is free.

Pricing

How much does my use case cost?

Understand your monthly cost to solve for a use case, with products you need and key usage assumptions laid out.

Image tagging, processing and search

Products used

Cloud Vision

Cloud Storage

Pub/Sub

Cloud Run

Usage assumptions

Estimated monthly cost (USD)

$27.36

Extract text and insights from documents

Products used

Document AI

Cloud Storage

BigQuery

Cloud Functions

Usage assumptions

Estimated monthly cost (USD)

$71.87

Products used

Cloud Vision

Cloud Storage

Pub/Sub

Cloud Run

Usage assumptions

Estimated monthly cost (USD)

$27.36

Pricing Calculator

Estimate the cost of your project by pulling in all the tools you need in a single place.

Custom Quote

Connect with our sales team to get a custom quote for your organization's unique needs.

Start your proof of concept

New customers get up to $300 in free credits to try Google Cloud products

Have a large project?

See code samples for OCR solutions and use cases

Learn how to detect labels with Cloud Vision API

Learn how to automate a doc processing pipeline with Google AI