The table below lists some general differences between the ABBYY Linux CLI OCR tool with the alternative to use the ABBYY Cloud OCR service via Rest-API. Both approaches allow to automate the text recognition process via “light” coding, but they way how both products work is rather different.
| CLI OCR | Cloud OCR SDK | |
|---|---|---|
| Integration | Integration on a terminal/script level | REST-API |
| Coding | Ready to use from the command line | Custom Code required, Code sample are available |
| Internet Connection | only needed for CLI download & activation (http or email) | required to upload the document images/PDFs and to download the results |
| Processing | Processing on the local machine | Remote processing, ABBYY service running on Windows Azure |
| Scalability | Local machine capacity limits, use multiple licenses/machines to scale up V11 comes with built in multi-core support |
Auto-Scalability of the service, well suited to process large projects Cloud OCR Scalability |
| Feature Set | Packaged Feature Set | Packaged Feature Set some features that are not available in the CLI, e.g. Business Card reading, Support of machine readable zones, Zonal OCR |
| Distribution Pricing |
Defined feature & volume packages | Pre-Paid Volume (online or contract), Subscription contracts |
| Trial | online on ocr4Linux.com | free Developer registration with free test images and a test volume for own documents, and Browser based test-tool to visually see the OCR result |
| License Activation | activation of the CLI license on the local machine required | service can be used from different machines, no local license needed |
| Payment |
one time payment, pricingv11 |
pay per use, pre-paid |
| Data Privacy | local processing, security depends on the machine setup | ABBYY Cloud OCR service is setup, running and following the European data privacy law. The jobs and processing results can/have to be deleted. Contractual Data Outsourcing agreements are available for large projects and integration of the service in other server/cloud back ends. |