Alternatives to Ocrmypdf?

MarjaE · 05-29-2025, 06:25 PM

I've been using ocrmypdf to ocr or re-ocr pdf books and articles. But:

1. It will crash if the book contains blank pages, or other problem pages.

2. It rasterizes everything. So even if the original was a clean pdf which just had buggy text encodng, the output will be a rasterized pdf.

3. It doesn't like spaces in the file names or file path. So I have to rename and move pdfs before processing.

I know k2pdfopt can ocr pdfs, but in my experience, trying to do everything at once can make k2pdfopt crash too. So I tend to run it, and *then* run ocrmypdf. I tried the reverse, but it sometimes scrambled the ocr.

Are there other scriptable ocr options, with decent language support, which are less likely to crash?

JawadLeLogeur · 10-29-2025, 10:33 AM

I tried this recently https://github.com/datalab-to/marker and was impressed by the results. (Ctrl+F OCRConverter on the page)

05-29-2025, 06:25 PM	#1
MarjaE Guru Posts: 942 Karma: 53902736 Join Date: Jun 2015 Device: multiple	Alternatives to Ocrmypdf? I've been using ocrmypdf to ocr or re-ocr pdf books and articles. But: 1. It will crash if the book contains blank pages, or other problem pages. 2. It rasterizes everything. So even if the original was a clean pdf which just had buggy text encodng, the output will be a rasterized pdf. 3. It doesn't like spaces in the file names or file path. So I have to rename and move pdfs before processing. I know k2pdfopt can ocr pdfs, but in my experience, trying to do everything at once can make k2pdfopt crash too. So I tend to run it, and then run ocrmypdf. I tried the reverse, but it sometimes scrambled the ocr. Are there other scriptable ocr options, with decent language support, which are less likely to crash?

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Alternatives?	zzko26	Viewer	3	05-09-2023 04:23 AM
Is there a GUI for OCRmyPDF?	ownedbycats	PDF	12	03-08-2022 11:45 PM
OCRmyPDF adds OCR text layer to scanned PDF files	orebmur	PDF	0	01-20-2018 07:16 PM
Alternatives with 3G?	owly	Which one should I buy?	11	06-08-2011 11:10 PM
Alternatives to the DR1000	omro	iRex	1	10-08-2009 08:34 PM

10-29-2025, 10:33 AM	#2
JawadLeLogeur Zealot Posts: 110 Karma: 7156 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Western Sahara Device: Kobo Forma 4.15.12920	I tried this recently https://github.com/datalab-to/marker and was impressed by the results. (Ctrl+F OCRConverter on the page)