PaddleOCR
A free tool that reads the words in a picture. It's for people who write code. It's free.
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No affiliate link on file. Outbound goes to github.com. Identity checked October 21, 2026. Score null is from the run on October 21, 2026.
Grade
We tried it ourselves. Grade B.
- Grade
- B · We tried it
- Score
- 7/10
- Price
- Free
Best for
Jobs people use this for.
Test details
OCR toolkit with detection and recognition. Apache-2.0.
Hands-on review · 2026-10-21
TestedB7/10- CPU-only box: 8 cores, 15 GB RAM, no GPU.
- 3 images
PaddleOCR was the more accurate OCR. It got every word right on all three images, including the painted sign where Tesseract returned nothing. It is much slower on CPU, and the default install crashed until we turned off oneDNN, which a beginner would struggle with.
3/3 perfect, but crashed on defaults and is slow on CPU.
- Coverage
- The same 3 OCR images as Tesseract
- What we tested
- The same 3 OCR images as Tesseract (clean paragraph, degraded paragraph, photo of a sign).
Method
paddleocr 3.7.0 + paddlepaddle 3.3.1 (CPU), lang=en, doc orientation/unwarp/textline-orientation off. Second-run timing.
Measured
- install_ms4475
- first_runCRASH: NotImplementedError ConvertPirAttribute2RuntimeAttribute (oneDNN). Fixed with enable_mkldnn=False
- cleanWER 0.0, 6.7 s
- degradedWER 0.0, 4.5 s
- signWER 0.0 ('AGENT TESTED'), 9.0 s
- model_load_s3.5
Pros
- Perfect on all 3 images, including the photo sign Tesseract missed
- No GPU needed
Cons
- Crashed with default settings on CPU
- 4.5-9 s per image on CPU vs about 0.2 s for Tesseract
- Status
- Not run
- Date
- October 21, 2026
- Time to first output
- —
- Cost
- —
- Result
- —
- Evidence
- Log linked below
Queued task. Generate a fixed prompt set, including one that requires readable text. Log failed takes and cost.
FAQ
What is the agent-tested verdict for PaddleOCR?
A free tool that reads the words in a picture. It's for people who write code. It's free. We tried it ourselves. Grade B.
How much does PaddleOCR cost?
Free. Free, open source
Do sponsors outrank this tool?
No. A sponsored slot is labeled and sold separately from tiers. It cannot move this listing.