More so now than ever, companies rely on expense management software to manage their accounting and expenses. The financial sector might have jumped on the digitization bandwagon later than other sectors, but our evolving commercial landscape has put paid to many traditional accounting practices.
With the passing of the touch comes a raft of questions that business owners must ask themselves. From identifying the most efficient software to complete digital transactions to deciding on the right mobile bookkeeping platform and, of course, how to manage day-to-day expenses in real-time, business owners must have the utmost confidence in their operations.
Now, this is quite a broad topic. So, in the interest of keeping things simple, we’re just going to look at one aspect of commercial financial management – expenses and answer the question, ‘what is the best real-time receipt OCR API for developers?’
Keep reading below as we break down the jargon barriers and tell you exactly what you need to know real-time optical character recognition APIs, including which is the best for your business to use.
The Competitors
In the interest of getting an overview of what developers can choose when looking for a real-time OCR API receipt parser, we’ve compared two heavy hitters with our own Tabscanner OCR API.
We’ll look at the fundamental merits of each, weighing up the pros and cons and then provide you with a definitive answer. The competitors vying for the crown are Google Vision API, Tesseract OCR and, of course, Tabscanner.
You’re welcome as a spectator to read along, form your own opinions, and then decide which OCR API is for you. So, without further ado, let’s get started.
Microsoft Cloud Vision API
The big name in this content brings significant reputational weight to the content, but sadly, not a great deal of substance. Microsoft Vision API performs admirably when scanning smartphone captured documents, but not as well as, perhaps, the world’s technology leader should.
When recognizing handwriting, Google Microsoft again doesn’t exactly wow customers. Yes, it can identify characters and digitize documents, but users looking for an accurate receipt parsing API will be left disappointed.
Developed by Hewlett Packard, Tesseract OCR uses a simplified Python-wrapper which allows it to read text within images. Now, as impressive as this sounds, we have one question for you? How often do you scan documents or receipts with images inside text?
Then there’s the problem that Tesseract OCR has very rudimentary image processing capabilities, which makes its ability to read text within documents almost redundant. In this case, it might have been best for Hewlett Packard to master the fundamentals before attempting complex performances.
Employing intelligent data extraction, Tabscanner’s document and receipt parser can understand receipt fields with human levels of intelligence. Its simple and robust OCR API can be seamlessly integrated into a wealth of software, and it’s reliable and easy to use.
Don’t believe us? Tabscanner is able to achieve 98% and better accuracy on all core data – and it is conversant with myriad of character sets and currencies the world over. Unlike Microsoft Vision and Tesseract OCR, Tabscanner has honed the fundamentals of receipt parsing – the accuracy of the core data making it more reliable – and trusted by those who are an authority in OCR APIs.
Bottom line: if you want to accurately digitize receipts and documents, you need Tabscanner.
What Is the Best Receipt Scanner?
The answer is obvious. Of the leading contenders for the crown, Tabscanner easily sits atop the podium. Having successfully extracted more than 100,000,000 receipts worldwide – and still achieving a phenomenal 98% accuracy or core data, Tabscanner’s prowess speaks for itself.
Not only that, but all data fields are also processed in less than 2 seconds. The only OCR API to return accurate line-item data extraction from any POS receipt in the world, Tabscanner is clearly leaps and bounds ahead of any completing OCR API.
In the competition for what is the best real-time receipt OCR API, Tabscanner sits atop the podium – by a significant margin.