Iteration Layer vs Tesseract
Tesseract is the classic open-source OCR engine — fast and reliable on clean scans, but outputs raw text with no document structure.
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Why developers switch from Tesseract
Tesseract outputs raw text — no headings, no tables, no document structure preserved.
Structured markdown, not raw text
Tesseract outputs plain text or hOCR with position data. It has no concept of headings, lists, or table structure. We return clean markdown with document semantics preserved — headings, tables, and lists rendered as proper markdown syntax.
Image description field
When you convert an image file, we return both the OCR-extracted markdown and a natural language description of the image content. Tesseract returns text characters only — no semantic understanding.
No Tesseract binary to manage
Tesseract requires installing the binary, language data packs, and often image preprocessing pipelines (deskew, binarize, denoise) before accuracy is acceptable. We are a managed API: one HTTP call, no system dependencies.
Feature-by-feature comparison
We went through the docs so you don't have to. Here's how every feature compares — including the ones where we're not the better choice.
| Feature | Iteration Layer | Tesseract |
|---|---|---|
| Markdown output |
Clean markdown
Returns well-structured markdown with preserved headings, tables, and lists from any document |
Raw text
Outputs plain text, hOCR, or XML without document structure — no headings, tables, or lists as markdown |
| Image description |
Yes
Returns a natural language description of image content alongside OCR markdown for image files |
No
Text character extraction only — no semantic image understanding |
| Supported input formats |
40+ formats
Process 40+ formats — PDF, Office, EPUB, RTF, LaTeX, email, Jupyter, images, and more — in a single API endpoint |
Images only
Supports image files (PNG, JPEG, TIFF) — PDFs must be converted to images first |
| Table extraction |
Markdown tables
Tables are extracted and rendered as clean markdown table syntax |
No
No table detection or structure preservation — table content extracted as unstructured text |
| Image preprocessing |
Built-in
Automatic image preprocessing and enhancement as part of the conversion pipeline |
Manual
Accuracy depends heavily on manual preprocessing — deskewing, binarization, and denoising |
| MCP server |
Yes
MCP server available for integration with AI agents and assistants |
No
No MCP server available |
| Open source |
Proprietary
Closed-source managed SaaS platform |
Apache 2.0
Mature open-source project under Apache 2.0 with decades of development and a large ecosystem |
| Language coverage |
Standard
Handles documents in any language |
100+ languages
Over 100 languages with custom training support for additional scripts |
| Lightweight deployment |
Cloud only
Cloud-based managed API |
Very lightweight
CPU-only, small binary, runs on edge devices and embedded systems with minimal resources |
| EU hosting |
EU only
All processing happens exclusively on EU-hosted servers |
Your choice
Runs on your infrastructure, so data residency depends on where you deploy |
| Pricing model |
Per page
Simple, predictable per-page pricing |
Free
Open source and free — runs on CPU with no GPU cost required |
| Infrastructure required |
None
Fully managed API with no deployment or infrastructure to manage |
Self-hosted
Requires installing the Tesseract binary and language data packs on your infrastructure |
| GDPR / Data privacy |
Zero retention
No files or results stored beyond temporary 90-day logs |
Your responsibility
Data privacy depends entirely on your deployment and infrastructure choices |
Pricing
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Still evaluating?
See how we compare — and where the competition still wins. Choosing the right tool shouldn't require a week of research.
Reducto
Reducto outputs markdown from US servers and charges per page — without an image description field.
LlamaParse
LlamaParse is US-based and per-page — and doesn't describe image content.
Mistral OCR
Mistral has best-in-class OCR and returns markdown, but doesn't describe image content and processes files from US servers.
Nanonets
Nanonets DocStrange outputs markdown, but has no image descriptions and no EU hosting option.
DocuPipe
DocuPipe extracts structured fields from documents — it doesn't produce clean, readable markdown.
Unstructured
Unstructured is built for ETL pipelines and RAG ingestion — not a simple document-to-markdown API.
AWS Textract
Textract returns raw strings and bounding boxes — not a markdown document ready to read or embed.
Azure Document Intelligence
Azure outputs model-specific field values, not clean markdown — and requires model selection or training first.
Google Document AI
Document AI requires a GCP project, processor selection, and S3-equivalent storage before you get any text out.
OlmOCR
OlmOCR requires a GPU, only supports English, and intentionally strips headers and footers.
PaddleOCR
PaddleOCR outputs markdown, but requires the PaddlePaddle framework and self-hosted infrastructure.
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