Open source ocr projects

Every project in the registry tagged ocr, ranked by real GitHub adoption.

projects 7 combined stars ★ 188K refresh nightly
01 PaddleOCR ★ 90K

Turn any PDF or image document into structured data for your AI. A powerful, lightweight OCR toolkit that bridges the gap between images/PDFs and LLMs. Supports

last pushyesterday languagePython licenseApache-2.0
02 Paperless-ngx ★ 45K

Effortlessly organize your digital documents

last push5 hours ago languagePython licenseGPL-3.0
03 ShareX ★ 40K

Powerful screen capture and file sharing tool for Windows

last push27 hours ago languageC# licenseGPL-3.0
04 PyMuPDF ★ 11K

PyMuPDF is a high performance Python library for data extraction, analysis, conversion & manipulation of PDF (and other) documents.

last push8 hours ago languagePython licenseAGPL-3.0
05 docspell ★ 2.3K

Assist in organizing your piles of documents, resulting from scanners, e-mails and other sources with miminal effort.

last push7 hours ago languageElm licenseAGPL-3.0
06 papermerge-core ★ 539

Papermerge OSS

last push13 days ago languagePython licenseApache-2.0
07 Capd ★ 51

Capture web pages, text, and images. Find them fast.

last push7 days ago languageSwift licenseMIT

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Frequently asked questions

How many open source ocr projects are there?

This registry tracks 7 projects tagged ocr, with 188,253 GitHub stars between them. The most-adopted is PaddleOCR at 89,729 stars.

Are these ocr projects free to use?

Yes — 7 of the 7 carry an explicit open-source licence across 4 distinct licences, so there is no licence fee. Where a project also sells a hosted or enterprise version, the self-hosted path remains free.

Which ocr project should I choose?

The list above is ranked by GitHub stars, but stars measure attention rather than fit. Check three things on each card: the licence (permissive versus copyleft), the language it is written in, and the last-push date — a high-star project that has not been pushed in a year is a liability.

Are these ocr projects still maintained?

7 of the 7 were pushed in the last 90 days, and every card shows its exact last-push date so you can see the rest. Sort your shortlist by that date before committing to a migration.