head to head · open source
PaddleOCR vs ruoyi-ai
PaddleOCR has 89,852 GitHub stars, 11,370 forks, 243 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. ruoyi-ai has 5,710 stars, 1,407 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. PaddleOCR leads on adoption by 1,474% (89,852 vs 5,710 stars). PaddleOCR is written in Python under Apache-2.0; ruoyi-ai is written in Java under MIT. PaddleOCR has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, ruoyi-ai 25%. 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 | ruoyi-ai | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 5.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 ruoyi-ai if
- You want the ruoyi-ai feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and ruoyi-ai 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 ruoyi-ai
RuoYi AI is an MIT licensed, Java based enterprise AI development framework for building AI agents, aimed at developers and platform teams that need multi provider LLM management, private knowledge bases, visual workflow orchestration and multi agent coordination in a single self hostable stack.
read the full ruoyi-ai overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is PaddleOCR or ruoyi-ai more popular?
PaddleOCR has 89,852 GitHub stars and ruoyi-ai has 5,710. PaddleOCR has the larger community by that measure.
Are PaddleOCR and ruoyi-ai free?
Both are open source. PaddleOCR is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ruoyi-ai under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between PaddleOCR and ruoyi-ai?
PaddleOCR is written in Python and ruoyi-ai in Java. 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 ruoyi-ai?
Choose PaddleOCR if you want the larger community (89,852 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose ruoyi-ai if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.