Extract Text from Image (OCR)

Extract text from images without sending the image to an external service. The built-in fast tier uses Tesseract. The optional balanced and best tiers use RapidOCR with pinned PP-OCR ONNX models.

API Endpoint

POST /api/v1/tools/image/ocr

Processing: OCR is always asynchronous. After validation and enqueueing, the endpoint immediately returns 202 Accepted with a jobId. Follow the job's SSE progress stream to its terminal complete or failed event; a successful event's result contains the OCR fields.

Accurate OCR pack: Optional ocr runtime (about 208-234 MiB to download and 409-488 MiB installed, depending on the target). fast does not require this pack; the installer verifies the exact sizes bound by the signed index.

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
file	file	Yes	-	Image file (multipart), up to 512 MiB encoded and 40 megapixels decoded; a lower operator upload limit still applies
quality	string	No	Dynamic	Quality tier: fast (Tesseract), balanced (RapidOCR with the small PP-OCRv6 models), or best (the higher-accuracy medium PP-OCRv6 models with calibrated variant scoring)
language	string	No	"auto"	Language hint: auto, en, de, fr, es, zh, ja, ko. Fast does not support ko
enhance	boolean	No	Tier-dependent	Improve local contrast before recognition. Fast applies it directly; Balanced and Best retain the variant only when calibrated scoring improves the result. Defaults to true for best and false for fast/balanced
engine	string	No	-	Deprecated compatibility alias. Use quality instead. tesseract maps to fast; the legacy paddleocr value maps to balanced but does not load PaddlePaddle

If quality and the deprecated engine field are both omitted, SnapOtter selects the highest available tier in this order: best, balanced, fast. Korean never selects fast; it uses best, then balanced, or returns the accurate-runtime install or compatibility error.

Example Request

curl -X POST http://localhost:1349/api/v1/tools/image/ocr \
  -F "[email protected]" \
  -F 'settings={"quality":"best","language":"en","enhance":true}'

Accepted response (202)

{
  "jobId": "a1b2c3d4-e5f6-7890-abcd-ef1234567890",
  "async": true
}

Progress and result (SSE)

Connect to GET /api/v1/jobs/{jobId}/progress with the jobId returned by the 202 response (or the supplied clientJobId). Keep the stream open until the terminal complete or failed event. A successful terminal frame contains the OCR output in result:

{
  "jobId": "a1b2c3d4-e5f6-7890-abcd-ef1234567890",
  "type": "single",
  "phase": "complete",
  "stage": "complete",
  "percent": 100,
  "result": {
    "jobId": "a1b2c3d4-e5f6-7890-abcd-ef1234567890",
    "downloadUrl": "/api/v1/download/a1b2c3d4-e5f6-7890-abcd-ef1234567890/document_ocr.txt",
    "originalSize": 12345,
    "processedSize": 47,
    "text": "Extracted text content from the image...",
    "engine": "rapidocr-onnx",
    "requestedQuality": "best",
    "actualQuality": "best",
    "device": "cpu",
    "provider": "CPUExecutionProvider",
    "degraded": false,
    "warnings": [],
    "runtimeVersion": "2.2.0",
    "modelVersion": "PP-OCRv6-best-v1-medium"
  }
}

Processing failures arrive in the terminal failed event's error field; they are not returned as an HTTP 422 after enqueueing.

Notes

• fast is available in supported SnapOtter images for auto, en, de, es, fr, zh, and ja. It does not support Korean (ko); Korean requires the optional accurate OCR pack and balanced or best.
• Built-in Tesseract adds about 25 MiB to the official image. The accurate pack is stored in /data/ai, not baked into the image.
• The accurate pack is published for the official Linux amd64 and arm64 containers. It deliberately uses ONNX Runtime's CPU provider, including on NVIDIA hosts, so it does not depend on CUDA libraries or GPU compatibility. Unsupported hosts receive an explicit incompatibility error for Korean instead of silently falling back to Fast.
• The successful terminal result includes both the extracted text in text and a downloadable .txt artifact in downloadUrl.
• SnapOtter honors an explicitly requested tier. If balanced or best is unavailable, the API returns 501 with FEATURE_NOT_INSTALLED or FEATURE_INCOMPATIBLE; it never silently downgrades the request to another tier. Explicit Fast or legacy tesseract with Korean returns FEATURE_INCOMPATIBLE and fast-korean-unsupported before queueing.
• A successful empty result remains an empty result. Runtime failures return an error instead of retrying with a lower-quality engine.
• The successful terminal result reports both requestedQuality and actualQuality, plus the engine, device, provider, runtime and model versions, and any warnings.
• Supports HEIC/HEIF, RAW, TGA, PSD, EXR, and HDR input formats via automatic decoding.
• Oversized encoded inputs return 413. Images over 40 megapixels and OCR responses over their bounded output limits are rejected instead of being partially processed.