Docling is free, with no paid plan attached. Dolphin (ByteDance) is free, with no paid plan attached. Both are listed under AI OCR & Document Extraction, so this is a like-for-like comparison. Neither is ranked above the other — Flocci carries no sponsored placement.
Docling is free, with no paid plan attached and is listed for MIT-licensed, 64.7k GitHub stars, IBM Research-originated, now under LF AI & Data Foundation. Dolphin (ByteDance) is free, with no paid plan attached and is listed for two-stage document-type and layout analysis then element parsing. Both sit in AI OCR & Document Extraction.
Neither — Docling and Dolphin (ByteDance) are both free, so the choice comes down to capability rather than cost. Both entries list what they uniquely do above.
Choose Docling if you need MIT-licensed, 64.7k GitHub stars, IBM Research-originated, now under LF AI & Data Foundation; choose Dolphin (ByteDance) if you need two-stage document-type and layout analysis then element parsing. Flocci AI Tools does not rank one above the other — it shows both feature sets side by side and lets the requirement decide.
| Docling | Dolphin (ByteDance) | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing tier | Free | Free |
| Free to start | Yes | Yes |
| Category | Research & Learning | Research & Learning |
| Type | AI OCR & Document Extraction | AI OCR & Document Extraction |
| Listed capabilities |
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| Tags | docling, ibm document ai, pdf parsing open source, document conversion, free ocr | dolphin ocr, bytedance dolphin, dolphin-v2 document parsing, open source document parser, free document image parsing |
| Website | github.com | github.com |
| Full page | Docling details → | Dolphin (ByteDance) details → |
| Alternatives | Docling alternatives → | Dolphin (ByteDance) alternatives → |