Simple OCR (Tesseract)

Fast text extraction from scanned PDFs and images using Tesseract. Good baseline accuracy for clean, printed documents. No additional cost beyond standard API credits.

POSThttps://app.alternapdf.com/api/v1/ocr/extract/simple

Content-Type: multipart/form-data

Documents over 20 pages are automatically processed asynchronously. Append ?async=true to force async processing for any request.

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`file`	file	Yes	PDF or image file (PNG, JPEG, WebP)
`output`	string	No	`simple` or `detailed`. Default: `simple`
`enhance`	boolean	No	Enable AI post-processing to clean up OCR output. Default: `false`

Code Examples

cURL

curl -X POST "https://app.alternapdf.com/api/v1/ocr/extract/simple" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -F "file=@scanned-document.pdf" \
  -F "output=simple" \
  -F "enhance=false"

Python

import requests

url = "https://app.alternapdf.com/api/v1/ocr/extract/simple"
headers = {"X-API-Key": "YOUR_API_KEY"}

with open("scanned-document.pdf", "rb") as f:
    files = {"file": ("scanned-document.pdf", f, "application/pdf")}
    data = {"output": "simple", "enhance": "false"}
    response = requests.post(url, headers=headers, files=files, data=data)

result = response.json()
print(result["data"]["text"])
print(f"Pages: {result['data']['pages']}")
print(f"Confidence: {result['data']['confidence']}")

JavaScript

const fs = require("fs");
const FormData = require("form-data");

const form = new FormData();
form.append("file", fs.createReadStream("scanned-document.pdf"));
form.append("output", "simple");
form.append("enhance", "false");

const response = await fetch("https://app.alternapdf.com/api/v1/ocr/extract/simple", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "X-API-Key": "YOUR_API_KEY",
    ...form.getHeaders(),
  },
  body: form,
});

const result = await response.json();
console.log(result.data.text);
console.log("Pages:", result.data.pages);
console.log("Confidence:", result.data.confidence);

Response

Returns extracted text with page count, confidence score, and word count.

JSON Response (simple output)

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "text": "Invoice #12345\nDate: 2024-01-15\n\nBill To:\nAcme Corporation\n123 Main Street\nNew York, NY 10001\n\nItems:\n- Widget A: $50.00\n- Widget B: $75.00\n\nTotal: $125.00",
    "pages": 1,
    "confidence": 0.92,
    "word_count": 24
  },
  "metadata": {
    "engine": "simple",
    "processing_time_ms": 1250,
    "filename": "scanned-document.pdf"
  }
}

Response Fields

Field	Type	Description
`data.text`	string	Extracted text from all pages
`data.pages`	integer	Number of pages processed
`data.confidence`	float	OCR confidence score (0.0 to 1.0)
`data.word_count`	integer	Total number of words extracted
`metadata.engine`	string	Always "simple" for this endpoint
`metadata.processing_time_ms`	integer	Processing time in milliseconds
`metadata.filename`	string	Original uploaded filename