Docling vs Marker
Both are alternatives to AWS Textract. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as Marker vs Docling — same comparison, one verdict.
Docling is open source (MIT) and Marker is not (GPL-3.0 with commercial revenue condition) — so the real question is whether you want to own the document ai & ocr stack or rent it.
Docling
TOP PICKIBM's document converter. Layout-aware PDF to clean Markdown, MIT.
Docling parses PDFs, Office documents, images and HTML into a structured representation that preserves reading order, tables, figures and headings, then exports to Markdown or JSON. It uses purpose-trained layout and table models rather than heuristics, which is why it holds up on multi-column academic papers and financial statements where simpler extractors interleave columns into nonsense. It integrates directly with LlamaIndex and Haystack, is MIT licensed, and runs entirely locally including on CPU.
Marker
The best PDF-to-Markdown quality here — check the licence first.
Marker converts PDFs to Markdown with the highest fidelity of anything in this list: it handles equations, code blocks, tables and multi-column layouts, and optionally uses an LLM pass to improve difficult sections. For academic papers and technical documents the output quality is noticeably ahead. The caveat we would rather state than have you find in a licence review: Marker is GPL-3.0 with an additional revenue condition from its maintainer, so organisations above a revenue threshold need a commercial licence. Free for research and for smaller organisations, but not unconditionally.
Side by side
10 points of comparison, every one read from a verified field. Green marks the side that wins a row outright. A dash means we do not hold that fact — never that it is zero.
| Docling | Marker | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty ScoreOur transparent 0–100 composite for data ownership and exit cost. | 94 | 70 |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first data | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 with commercial revenue condition |
| Pricing | Free, MIT. Runs on your own hardware, CPU or GPU. | Free below the maintainer's revenue threshold; a commercial licence is required above it. |
| RAM to run it wellThe figure that actually matters, not the vendor's minimum. | 8 GB — the layout models are the memory cost | — |
| Realistic running costWhat the box costs each month if you run it yourself. | $0 on your own hardware. A 100,000-page corpus is a weekend of compute against a four-figure Textract invoice. | — |
| Setup timeHonest first-install estimate, not the marketing quickstart. | 1 hour | — |
| Ongoing maintenanceThe part nobody budgets for. | Low. | — |
Docling is Macrostack's recommended AWS Textract alternative, so it's our pick here.
Weighing both against staying on AWS Textract? Is AWS Textract free? What it actually costs →
Docling
Strengths
- +Layout-aware — preserves reading order, tables and structure
- +Outputs clean Markdown/JSON that drops into a RAG pipeline
- +Direct integrations with LlamaIndex and Haystack
- +MIT, fully local, no per-page cost
Trade-offs
- −Slower per page than cloud OCR on very large batches
- −Handwriting support is weak compared with Textract
- −No specialised invoice or receipt models
Marker
Strengths
- +Best PDF-to-Markdown fidelity of the options here
- +Handles equations, code blocks and complex tables well
- +Optional LLM pass for difficult pages
- +Runs entirely locally
Trade-offs
- −Not unconditionally open source — revenue-gated commercial terms
- −GPL-3.0 copyleft affects how you can distribute derived work
- −GPU strongly recommended for reasonable throughput
Which one fits you
The trade-offs above, turned into a decision. Find the line that describes your team.
Choose Docling
if you want the source and the option to fork it, and layout-aware — preserves reading order, tables and structure.
Choose Marker
if best PDF-to-Markdown fidelity of the options here.
Neither, yet
if both carry a real cost you should weigh first — slower per page than cloud OCR on very large batches, and not unconditionally open source — revenue-gated commercial terms. If either of those is a dealbreaker for your team, the shortlist is wrong rather than the choice.
What it takes to run these yourself
Real requirements and honest running costs, not the vendor quickstart.
Docling vs Marker — common questions
Is Docling a better fit than Marker for document ai & ocr?
It depends on what you are optimising for, and the honest split is this: Docling scores 94 to Marker's 70 on data ownership and exit cost, so it is the safer choice if you care about being able to leave. Marker earns its place on a different axis — best PDF-to-Markdown fidelity of the options here. Neither is a wrong answer for every team; the table above is the actual comparison.
What happens if we want to switch later?
Docling keeps its data local or in open formats, so leaving is an export rather than a negotiation. Marker is still self-hostable, so the files stay on your server either way — but it is not local-first by design, so check what its export produces before you rely on it.
Can I self-host Docling or Marker?
Both can be self-hosted. The difference is what it costs you in time rather than whether it is possible — see the setup and maintenance rows above.
Are Docling and Marker both alternatives to AWS Textract?
Yes — both appear in our AWS Textract comparison, which is why they are worth putting side by side. People usually arrive here already having decided to move off AWS Textract and now choosing between the two replacements, which is a narrower and much easier question.
Related alternative guides
Facts verified 2026-08-11. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.