MinerU is free, with no paid plan attached. PaddleOCR-VL 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.
MinerU is free, with no paid plan attached and is listed for parses PDFs, images and Office files into Markdown, JSON, HTML or LaTeX. PaddleOCR-VL is free, with no paid plan attached and is listed for 1B-parameter document parsing VLM (NaViT encoder + ERNIE-4.5-0.3B). Both sit in AI OCR & Document Extraction.
Neither — MinerU and PaddleOCR-VL are both free, so the choice comes down to capability rather than cost. Both entries list what they uniquely do above.
Choose MinerU if you need parses PDFs, images and Office files into Markdown, JSON, HTML or LaTeX; choose PaddleOCR-VL if you need 1B-parameter document parsing VLM (NaViT encoder + ERNIE-4.5-0.3B). Flocci AI Tools does not rank one above the other — it shows both feature sets side by side and lets the requirement decide.
| MinerU | PaddleOCR-VL | |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | mineru, pdf to markdown free, open source pdf parser, mineru ocr, document parsing for llm, mineru.net | paddleocr vl, paddleocr, baidu ocr open source, 109 languages ocr, free ocr model |
| Website | github.com | github.com |
| Full page | MinerU details → | PaddleOCR-VL details → |
| Alternatives | MinerU alternatives → | PaddleOCR-VL alternatives → |