Tesseract
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
Open-source OCR engine for 100+ languages. Apache-2.0.
Hands-on review · 2026-10-21
TestedB7/10- CPU-only box: 8 cores, 15 GB RAM, no GPU.
- 3 images; synthetic documents
Tesseract is still the reliable free choice for scanned or rendered documents. It was perfect on clean text and made one error ('@' for 'a') on a blurred, rotated copy. With default settings it found no text in a photo of a sign, so for photos or scene text you need tuning or a different engine.
Excellent on documents. Failed scene text with defaults.
- Coverage
- Three images: clean text, a degraded copy, and a photo-style sign
- What we tested
- OCR accuracy on a clean rendered paragraph, the same paragraph blurred, rotated 4° and downscaled, and a photo-style sign (the Fibo 2.0 'AGENT TESTED' image).
Method
tesseract 5.5.0 from apt, eng model, default settings. WER against known text.
Measured
- clean245 ms, wer 0.0, text: AgentTested runs every tool on a clean Linux box. Today we measured install time
- degraded200 ms, wer 0.03, text: agentTested runs every tool on @ clean Linux box. Today we measured install time
- sign180 ms, wer 1.0, text empty
Pros
- Perfect on clean text, 1 error on the degraded image
- Runs in about 0.2 s, no GPU, from apt
Cons
- Returned nothing for large painted text on a photo with default settings
- Needed apt-get update before the package was found
- 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 Tesseract?
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 Tesseract cost?
Free. Apache-2.0.
Do sponsors outrank this tool?
No. A sponsored slot is labeled and sold separately from tiers. It cannot move this listing.