#2525th of 33 in Data and scraping for AIFor data and documents, documents and ocr
tesseract.js
JavaScript OCR library that runs Tesseract in the browser and Node.js
- Stars
- 38.8k
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Last commit
- May 2026
- Last release
- Dec 2025
- Language
- JavaScript
37,776 on 4 Apr 202638,802 on 31 Oct 2026
From GitHub's daily star counts.
Checked on GitHub.
Overview
Tesseract.js wraps a WebAssembly port of the Tesseract OCR engine and extracts text from images in the browser or on Node.js. It exposes a worker API (createWorker, recognize, terminate) plus schedulers for parallel processing, and supports a long list of languages. It does not read PDFs or change Tesseract's recognition model.
Who it is for: JavaScript developers adding image OCR to web or Node.js apps
Strengths
- Runs client-side in browsers via webpack, ESM or CDN script tag, so images can stay local
- Also runs on Node.js (v7 needs v16 or newer) with the same worker API
- Schedulers allow parallel recognition across multiple workers
- Supports almost any language through Tesseract language data, chosen in createWorker
Weaknesses
- No PDF support; the README points to Scribe.js for that
- Does not modify the Tesseract model, so accuracy is that of upstream Tesseract
- Since v6, output formats other than text (e.g. hocr) are off by default
- Breaking API changes across v4, v5 and v6 complicate upgrades
What it needs
- no GPU
- Docker
- Needs Node.js 16+ (v7, server use), tesseract.js-core (WebAssembly port of Tesseract)
- Models: Tesseract traineddata language files
Quick answers
Is tesseract.js open source?
Yes. Its code is on GitHub under the Apache-2.0 license.
Can you run tesseract.js with Docker?
Yes. Its repository has a Docker setup: a Dockerfile, a Compose file or a published image.
Does tesseract.js need a GPU?
No, it runs without one.
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