What is the best free alternative to Dolphin (ByteDance)?
olmOCR is the closest free alternative to Dolphin (ByteDance): same AI OCR & Document Extraction sub-category, and it is free. Apache 2.0 open-source OCR toolkit from Ai2, 19.3k GitHub stars
Best free Dolphin (ByteDance) alternatives
Looking for a free alternative to Dolphin (ByteDance)? Here are 9 ai ocr & document extraction worth trying — 9 with a free tier. Dolphin (ByteDance) itself is free.
| Tool | Dolphin (ByteDance) (you searched) | olmOCR | LangExtract (Google) | MinerU |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | free | free | free | free |
| Best for | Two-stage document-type and layout analysis then element parsing | Apache 2.0 open-source OCR toolkit from Ai2, 19.3k GitHub stars | Python library extracting structured data from unstructured text with LLMs | Parses PDFs, images and Office files into Markdown, JSON, HTML or LaTeX |
| Visit | Open ↗ | Open ↗ | Open ↗ | Open ↗ |
Dolphin (ByteDance) alternatives — straight answers
Are there free Dolphin (ByteDance) alternatives?
Yes — 9 of the 9 alternatives listed here are free or freemium: olmOCR, LangExtract (Google), MinerU, dots.ocr (dots.mocr), PaddleOCR-VL. None of them are paid-only.
Is Dolphin (ByteDance) free?
Dolphin (ByteDance) is free. There is no paid plan attached to it in the catalog.
How were these Dolphin (ByteDance) alternatives chosen?
They are the other tools in AI OCR & Document Extraction, then the rest of Research & Learning, ordered free tiers first and capped at 9. There is no sponsorship and no paid placement in that ordering — only the pricing tier decides.
All Dolphin (ByteDance) alternatives
Browse AI OCR & Document Extraction →olmOCR
AI OCR & Document Extraction
✦ WhyA Dolphin (ByteDance) alternative — Apache 2.0 open-source OCR toolkit from Ai2, 19.3k GitHub stars.
- Apache 2.0 open-source OCR toolkit from Ai2, 19.3k GitHub stars
- Vision-language-model based, handles equations/tables/multi-column layout
- Runs at a fraction of commercial OCR cost on a 7B model
LangExtract (Google)
AI OCR & Document Extraction
✦ WhyA Dolphin (ByteDance) alternative — Python library extracting structured data from unstructured text with LLMs.
- Python library extracting structured data from unstructured text with LLMs
- Maps each extraction to its exact source span
- Works with Gemini, OpenAI and local Ollama models
- Interactive HTML visualization of results
MinerU
AI OCR & Document Extraction
✦ WhyA Dolphin (ByteDance) alternative — Parses PDFs, images and Office files into Markdown, JSON, HTML or LaTeX.
- Parses PDFs, images and Office files into Markdown, JSON, HTML or LaTeX
- Runs fully locally with OCR, table and formula recognition
- Free hosted web app at mineru.net plus agent-ready outputs
- Version 4.0 adds four parsing quality tiers
dots.ocr (dots.mocr)
AI OCR & Document Extraction
✦ WhyA Dolphin (ByteDance) alternative — 3B vision-language model for layout parsing across many scripts.
- 3B vision-language model for layout parsing across many scripts
- Converts charts and diagrams into SVG code
- Scores 83.9 on olmOCR-bench
- MIT licensed with free live demo
PaddleOCR-VL
AI OCR & Document Extraction
✦ WhyA Dolphin (ByteDance) alternative — 1B-parameter document parsing VLM (NaViT encoder + ERNIE-4.5-0.3B).
- 1B-parameter document parsing VLM (NaViT encoder + ERNIE-4.5-0.3B)
- Handles text, tables, formulas, charts and handwriting
- Supports 109 languages including Hindi and Arabic
- Apache 2.0; newer PaddleOCR-VL-1.6 available
AskYourPDF
AI OCR & Document Extraction
✦ WhyA Dolphin (ByteDance) alternative — Chat with any PDF plus auto-fill PDF forms.
- Chat with any PDF plus auto-fill PDF forms
- Embeddable document chatbot for websites
- 5M+ users including MIT/Harvard/Oxford/Stanford
PDF.ai
AI OCR & Document Extraction
✦ WhyA Dolphin (ByteDance) alternative — Chat-with-PDF product plus a separate parse/extract/split PDF API.
- Chat-with-PDF product plus a separate parse/extract/split PDF API
- Popular ChatPDF-category alternative with API access for developers
Humata
AI OCR & Document Extraction
✦ WhyA Dolphin (ByteDance) alternative — Free tier: 60 pages, 10 answers, no card.
- Free tier: 60 pages, 10 answers, no card
- Cited answers across many uploaded files at once
- Paid tiers priced per extra page rather than per seat
LlamaParse
AI OCR & Document Extraction
✦ WhyA Dolphin (ByteDance) alternative — Parses 90+ formats incl. complex tables/charts/handwriting into clean markdown.
- Parses 90+ formats incl. complex tables/charts/handwriting into clean markdown
- 300,000+ users, 1B+ documents processed
- Free trial credits via LlamaCloud, then usage-based