Docling vs PaddleOCR
Both are alternatives to AWS Textract. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as PaddleOCR vs Docling — same comparison, one verdict.
Docling and PaddleOCR are closely matched on ownership (94 vs 92) — this one comes down to pricing and to which trade-offs below you can live with.
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.
PaddleOCR
The strongest open OCR engine, and the best at non-Latin scripts.
PaddleOCR is a comprehensive OCR toolkit covering text detection, recognition, table extraction, layout analysis and key-value extraction, with support for around eighty languages. Its non-Latin script handling — Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic — is clearly the best of the open options, and it ships lightweight mobile-scale models alongside the accurate server ones. Apache-2.0. If raw recognition accuracy on difficult scans is the constraint, this is the engine.
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 | PaddleOCR | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty ScoreOur transparent 0–100 composite for data ownership and exit cost. | 94 | 92 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first data | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Pricing | Free, MIT. Runs on your own hardware, CPU or GPU. | Free, Apache-2.0. |
| 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
PaddleOCR
Strengths
- +Best-in-class open recognition accuracy on difficult scans
- +Around eighty languages, with excellent non-Latin coverage
- +Includes table, layout and key-value extraction
- +Lightweight models for edge and mobile deployment
Trade-offs
- −Built on the PaddlePaddle framework — an extra dependency to adopt
- −Documentation is stronger in Chinese than in English
- −Output needs more post-processing than Docling's Markdown
Which one fits you
The trade-offs above, turned into a decision. Find the line that describes your team.
Choose Docling
if a lower exit cost matters more to you than any single feature, and layout-aware — preserves reading order, tables and structure.
Choose PaddleOCR
if best-in-class open recognition accuracy on difficult scans.
Neither, yet
if both carry a real cost you should weigh first — slower per page than cloud OCR on very large batches, and built on the PaddlePaddle framework — an extra dependency to adopt. 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 PaddleOCR — common questions
Is Docling a better fit than PaddleOCR for document ai & ocr?
It depends on what you are optimising for, and the honest split is this: Docling scores 94 to PaddleOCR's 92 on data ownership and exit cost, so it is the safer choice if you care about being able to leave. PaddleOCR earns its place on a different axis — best-in-class open recognition accuracy on difficult scans. 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. PaddleOCR 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 PaddleOCR?
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 PaddleOCR 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.
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Facts verified 2026-08-11. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.