tesseract
Tesseract provides an open-source OCR engine for extracting text from images, with its main repository hosted on GitHub.
About tesseract
Tesseract is an open-source OCR engine for extracting text from images. The package contains the libtesseract library and a command-line program named tesseract. Version 4 added a neural network (LSTM) engine focused on line recognition, and the legacy character-pattern engine from Tesseract 3 remains available through the Legacy OCR Engine mode (--oem 0). Version 5.0.0 was released on November 30, 2021, and is the current stable major version.
The engine reads PNG, JPEG and TIFF images and supports UTF-8 text. It recognizes more than 100 languages out of the box and can be trained for other languages. Output formats include plain text, hOCR, PDF, invisible-text-only PDF, TSV, ALTO and PAGE. The project does not include a graphical interface, and the documentation notes that OCR results often improve when the input image quality is improved.
Key features
- Extracts text from PNG, JPEG and TIFF image files
- Recognizes more than 100 languages out of the box
- Unicode (UTF-8) text support
- Output as plain text, hOCR, PDF, TSV, ALTO or PAGE
- Invisible-text-only PDF output
- C and C++ API (libtesseract) for building custom applications
Best for: Developers and technical users who need to extract text from images and are comfortable using a command-line tool or building with the C or C++ API.
Good for
- Open source, with the main repository hosted on GitHub
- Supports more than 100 languages out of the box
- Offers several output formats, including PDF and hOCR
Watch out for
- Does not include a graphical user interface
- OCR results often depend on the quality of the input image
- Languages beyond the built-in set require training
tesseract at a glance
- Category
- Development › Developer Tools
- Type
- Open-source project
- Pricing
- Not confirmed. Check the site
- Open source
- Yes · Source code
- Language
- English
- Last checked
- Oct 6, 2026 · Online when checked
- Listed
- Oct 5, 2026
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tesseract FAQ
Does Tesseract include a graphical interface?
No. The project does not include a GUI application. The documentation points to third-party GUI applications in its 3rdParty documentation.
Can Tesseract recognize languages it does not support out of the box?
Yes. The documentation states that Tesseract can be trained to recognize other languages, and it refers to the Tesseract Training documentation for details.
How can Tesseract be installed?
It can be installed from a pre-built binary package or built from source. Before building from source, check that the system has one of the supported compilers.
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