Gemini Flash vs PaddleOCR (PP-OCR)
PaddleOCR (PP-OCR) is cheaper per page; PaddleOCR (PP-OCR) is faster; only Gemini Flash supports tables, handwriting, math; only PaddleOCR (PP-OCR) supports bounding boxes, confidence.
Gemini Flashgoogle/gemini-flash | PaddleOCR (PP-OCR)paddle/paddleocr | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Vision model | Open source |
| Price | 3 credits / page | 1 credits / page |
| Per 1,000 pages | $3.00 | $1.00 |
| Typical speed | 1.6 s / page | 0.7 s / page |
| Best for | Handwriting and mixed layouts | Fast printed text, Chinese and English |
| Inputs | PDF, images | PDF, images |
| Languages | 100+ languages | 80+ languages |
| Max pages per request | 1,000 | 500 |
| Tables | ✓ Yes | No |
| Handwriting | ✓ Yes | No |
| Math | ✓ Yes | No |
| Bounding boxes | No | ✓ Yes |
| Confidence | No | ✓ Yes |
| Forms | No | No |
| Multilingual | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| On OCRRouter | Available | Coming soon |
Prices are what you pay on OCRRouter. Speed is the provider's typical figure, not a benchmark we ran.
What each one is
Gemini Flash
General vision model with strong handwriting and layout understanding at a low price.
Gemini Flash detailsPaddleOCR (PP-OCR)
Baidu's classic open-source text detection and recognition pipeline. Light enough to run on CPU.
PaddleOCR (PP-OCR) detailsUse one, fall back to the other
Request body
{
"model": "google/gemini-flash",
"fallbacks": ["paddle/paddleocr"],
"file_url": "https://example.com/document.pdf"
}