head to head · open source
PaddleOCR vs outlines
PaddleOCR has 89,745 GitHub stars, 11,360 forks, 243 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. outlines has 15,827 stars, 881 forks, 166 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. PaddleOCR leads on adoption by 467% (89,745 vs 15,827 stars). PaddleOCR is written in Python under Apache-2.0; outlines is written in Python under Apache-2.0. PaddleOCR has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, outlines 6%. PaddleOCR was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| PaddleOCR | outlines | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 16K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 881 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick PaddleOCR if
- You weight community size — 90K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick outlines if
- You want the outlines feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and outlines fits your workflow better
About PaddleOCR
PaddleOCR is an Apache 2.0 Python OCR and document AI toolkit that converts PDFs and images into structured, LLM ready JSON or Markdown across more than 100 languages, and it is built for developers who need to feed documents into RAG pipelines, agents, and document parsing services.
read the full PaddleOCR overview →
About outlines
Outlines is a Python library for structured generation with large language models, released under the Apache 2.0 license and maintained by the team at .txt. It lives in the AI and machine learning ecosystem, specifically among AI development platforms and structured generation tooling, and it is distributed through PyPI. The project describes itself as a way to guarantee structured outputs during generation rather than repairing them afterward, and its topic list places it alongside work on context free grammars, regular expressions, JSON, prompt engineering, and symbolic AI.
read the full outlines overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is PaddleOCR or outlines more popular?
PaddleOCR has 89,745 GitHub stars and outlines has 15,827. PaddleOCR has the larger community by that measure.
Are PaddleOCR and outlines free?
Both are open source. PaddleOCR is licensed under Apache-2.0 and outlines under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between PaddleOCR and outlines?
PaddleOCR is written in Python and outlines in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, PaddleOCR or outlines?
Choose PaddleOCR if you want the larger community (89,745 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose outlines if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.