Documents & Productivity — entry 017 of 30
OCR.Space
OCR.Space extracts text from images and PDFs via a simple REST API, supporting file upload, URL, or base64 input across 25+ languages. A free tier covers light usage without a credit card, with metered paid plans for higher volume and additional engines.
OCR.Space pulls text out of an image or PDF given either a URL, a file upload, or a base64 blob, and hands back the recognized text plus per-word position data if asked for. A live GET this run against /parse/imageurl with the shared helloworld demo key and a real image URL returned actual OCR'd text at HTTP 200 — no signup, no self-obtained key.
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<a href="https://greatapis.com/api/ocr-space/"><img src="https://greatapis.com/badge/ocr-space.svg" alt="Scored 61 on greatapis.com"></a>Auth quickstart
- OCR.Space's own docs publish a shared demo key,
helloworld, explicitly "ready to run without any further edits" — the live GET above used it as-is via?apikey=helloworldand got a real result back, no registration needed for a quick test. - For anything beyond testing, register a free key at
ocr.space/ocrapi/freekey(email signup, no card) and send it as theapikeyheader instead of a query parameter — the docs' own curl examples use-H "apikey:<key>", which keeps the key out of server logs and browser history the way the query-string form doesn't.
Your key is stored only in this browser (localStorage) and sent directly to the API — never to greatapis.
OCR an image by URL
GEThttps://api.ocr.space/parse/imageurl?apikey=helloworld&url=https://dl.a9t9.com/ocr/solarcell.jpg
{
"ParsedResults": [
{
"TextOverlay": {
"Lines": [],
"HasOverlay": false,
"Message": "Text overlay is not provided as it is not requested"
},
"TextOrientation": "0",
"FileParseExitCode": 1,
"ParsedText": "Solar cell\r\nArticle Talk\r\nFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia\r\nFor convection cells on the Sun's surface, see Solar granule.\r\nA solar cell or photovoltaic cell (PV cell) is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly\r\ninto electricity by means Of the photovoltaic effect. [II It is a form Of photoelectric cell, a device whose\r\nelectrical characteristics (such as current, voltage, or resistance) vary when exposed to light. Individual\r\nsolar cell devices are often the electrical building blocks of photovoltaic modules, known colloquially as\r\n\"solar panels\". The common single-junction silicon solar cell can produce a maximum Open-circuit voltage\r\nof approximately 0.5 to 0.6 volts.(2J\r\nPhotovoltaic cells may operate under sunlight or artificial light. In addition to producing energy, they can be\r\nused as a photodetector (for example infrared detectors), detecting light or other electromagnetic radiation\r\nnear the visible range, or measuring light intensity.\r\nRead\r\nEdit\r\n75 languages v\r\nView history Tools v\r\n",
"ErrorMessage": "",
"ErrorDetails": ""
}
],
"OCRExitCode": 1,
"IsErroredOnProcessing": false,
"ProcessingTimeInMilliseconds": "937",
"SearchablePDFURL": "Searchable PDF not generated as it was not requested."
}This is the full, real response body from this run, reformatted for readability — not trimmed. ParsedText is genuine OCR output on a Wikipedia screenshot, including its own recognition slips ("means Of the" for "means of the", "[II" for a footnote marker, "(2J" for "[2]") — the source image really does contain UI chrome ("Article Talk", "75 languages v") alongside the article text, and the engine transcribed that too.
Developer reference
Free tier: 500 requests/day per IP address (also capped at 25,000 requests/month); PRO/PRO PDF: 300,000 requests/month, no daily IP cap -- per ocr.space/ocrapi
Gotchas & limits
access-control-allow-origin: *is present on every response this run, including the error case below — a wildcard, not an echoed Origin, so browser-sidefetch()calls work directly against this API with no server-side proxy needed, unlike most of this category's conversion APIs.- A URL the API can't classify as an actual image fails with a generic exit code, not a helpful message — a live GET this run against a guessed-but-wrong image path returned HTTP 200 (not 4xx) with
{"OCRExitCode":99,"IsErroredOnProcessing":true,"ErrorMessage":["Unable to recognize the file type","E216:Unable to detect the file extension, or the file extension is incorrect, and no 'file type' provided in request..."]}— the failure is inside a 200 response body, so status-code-only error handling misses it entirely. - OCR output preserves the source image's own visual mistakes and stray UI text verbatim — confirmed in the real
ParsedTextabove, which includes on-page chrome ("Article Talk", "Read Edit") mixed in with the article body; there's no automatic filtering of navigation or boilerplate text from a screenshot.