EasyOcrSharp.Cli
3.1.0
dotnet tool install --global EasyOcrSharp.Cli --version 3.1.0
dotnet new tool-manifest
dotnet tool install --local EasyOcrSharp.Cli --version 3.1.0
#tool dotnet:?package=EasyOcrSharp.Cli&version=3.1.0
nuke :add-package EasyOcrSharp.Cli --version 3.1.0
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<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FarhanLodi/EasyOcrSharp/main/src/EasyOcrSharp/Assets/icon.png" alt="EasyOcrSharp" width="120" height="120">
EasyOcrSharp
High-accuracy, fully-offline OCR for .NET — EasyOCR's neural models, running natively on ONNX Runtime. No Python.
Quick start · Documents & tables · PDF · Languages · Production
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EasyOcrSharp runs EasyOCR's exact CRAFT text detector and CRNN recognizers — exported to ONNX and
executed through Microsoft.ML.OnnxRuntime. You get EasyOCR-grade accuracy in a tiny managed package:
no Python interpreter, no PyTorch, no native OCR binaries, and nothing ever leaves the machine.
await using var ocr = new EasyOcrService();
var result = await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage("receipt.png", new[] { "en" });
Console.WriteLine(result.FullText);
✨ Highlights
| 🌍 86 languages | 13 script families: Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Devanagari, Bengali, Chinese (Simplified & Traditional), Korean, Japanese, Thai, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada |
| 📦 ~3 MB package | Models download on demand and cache locally — nothing is bundled |
| 🔒 Verified & private | Every model download is SHA256-checked; OCR runs fully offline |
| ⚡ Fast | Concurrent multi-region recognition; automatic CUDA GPU with CPU fallback; tunable threads |
| 🧩 Flexible input | File / Stream / byte[] / Image / PDF, region-of-interest, recognize-from-boxes, word/line/paragraph grouping, auto language detection |
| 🧱 Document structure | AnalyzeDocumentAsync: layout regions, tables as HTML, formulas, seals & reading order (PP-StructureV3, built in), with Markdown / JSON export |
| 📄 Document-ready | Searchable-PDF output, plus hOCR / ALTO / TSV / JSON exporters |
| ✍️ Handwriting | TrOCR encoder/decoder recognition for handwritten text — something Python EasyOCR cannot do at all |
| 🔳 Barcodes & QR | Read barcodes and QR codes alongside text in a single pass |
| 🖍️ Redaction | Find by regex/keyword and permanently paint over it — Luhn-checked cards, mod-97 IBANs, emails, SSNs |
| 🧾 Fields & tables | Anchor-based key/value extraction with invoice presets, plus recovered tables as DataTable / CSV |
| 🎯 Accurate fields | Allow/block-lists, beam / word-beam decoders, per-box rotation, custom recognizers, exposed detection/grouping/contrast thresholds, post-OCR correction & CER/WER metrics |
| 📐 Word geometry | True per-word and per-character boxes from CTC alignment — not width estimates |
| 🖥️ CLI + web sample | dotnet tool install -g EasyOcrSharp.Cli, plus a Dockerized ASP.NET Core service sample |
| 🩺 Scan-ready | Deskew, orientation correction, adaptive binarize, denoise & sharpen, plus model-based document orientation & page unwarp |
| 📊 Production-grade | OpenTelemetry metrics & tracing, health checks, resilient resumable downloads, batch API |
| 🛠️ Modern .NET | AOT- & single-file-friendly, DI-ready, .NET 10 |
| 🖼️ MIT all the way down | Imaging runs on EasyImageSharp and the structure engine is built in — no build-time licence key, no commercial tier, no split-licensed package anywhere in the graph |
🆚 Why EasyOcrSharp?
| EasyOcrSharp | Python EasyOCR | Cloud OCR APIs | Tesseract (.NET wrappers) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Runtime | Pure .NET + ONNX | Python + PyTorch | Remote HTTP service | Native binary via P/Invoke |
| Install | dotnet add package |
pip + CUDA toolchain | API key + billing | Native libs + tessdata files |
| Privacy | 🟢 100% offline | 🟢 offline | 🔴 data leaves the machine | 🟢 offline |
| Accuracy | 🟢 EasyOCR neural models | 🟢 EasyOCR neural models | 🟢 high | 🟡 classical (weaker on hard text) |
| Tables / layout | 🟢 built-in (PP-Structure) | 🟡 add-ons | 🟢 yes | 🔴 no |
| PDF in & searchable out | 🟢 built-in | 🔴 DIY | 🟢 yes | 🔴 DIY |
| GPU | 🟢 CUDA (opt-in package) | 🟢 CUDA | n/a | 🔴 no |
| Native AOT / trimming | 🟢 yes | n/a | n/a | 🟡 limited |
| Cost | 🟢 free (MIT) | 🟢 free | 🔴 per-call | 🟢 free |
Same models as Python EasyOCR, none of the Python. Fully local, so no per-page cost and no data egress.
📥 Installation
dotnet add package EasyOcrSharp
PDF input and searchable-PDF output are built in — no extra package. For NVIDIA GPU acceleration (Windows/Linux x64, CUDA 12+):
dotnet add package EasyOcrSharp.Gpu
Upgrading from 1.x? v2 replaced the ~1.5 GB embedded Python + PyTorch runtime with native ONNX. The public API (
EasyOcrService,OcrResult,OcrLine,OcrBoundingBox) is unchanged.
Upgrading from 2.x? v3 changes the imaging library behind the pixel types on the public API — see Imaging below and the changelog. Method names, parameters and results are unchanged; what changes is the namespace the
Image<Rgb24>in yourusingdirectives comes from.
Imaging
Decoding, encoding and every pixel operation run on EasyImageSharp — MIT-licensed, fully managed, AOT- and trimming-friendly, with no build-time licence key and no commercial tier for consumers to inherit. It is maintained by the same author as this library, so a fix OCR needs does not wait on a third party.
It brings PNG, JPEG (baseline, progressive and CMYK), WebP (decode), GIF, BMP, TIFF (including CCITT G3/G4
and JPEG-in-TIFF), TGA, Netpbm, QOI and ICO, so Image.Load accepts anything you are likely to scan or be
sent. Pixel types (Image<Rgb24>, Rgba32, ...), geometry (Point, Size, Rectangle) and the
Mutate / Clone processing pipeline live in the EasyImageSharp, EasyImageSharp.PixelFormats and
EasyImageSharp.Processing namespaces:
using EasyImageSharp; // Image, Image.Load, Color, Rectangle
using EasyImageSharp.PixelFormats; // Rgb24, Rgba32, L8
using EasyImageSharp.Processing; // Mutate/Clone: Resize, Rotate, Crop, Grayscale, Deskew, ...
using var img = Image.Load<Rgb24>("page.png");
var result = await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage(img, new[] { "en" });
🚀 Quick start
using EasyOcrSharp.Services;
await using var ocr = new EasyOcrService();
var result = await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage("sample.png", new[] { "en" });
Console.WriteLine(result.FullText);
foreach (var line in result.Lines)
Console.WriteLine($"{line.Text} (confidence {line.Confidence:P0})");
The first call for a language downloads its model (cached afterwards). Detected text is returned as
reading-order lines (top-to-bottom), matching EasyOCR's readtext().
📦 The result model
public sealed record OcrResult
{
public string FullText { get; } // all lines joined by newlines (reading order)
public IReadOnlyList<OcrLine> Lines { get; }
public IReadOnlyList<string> Languages { get; }
public TimeSpan Duration { get; }
public bool UsedGpu { get; }
public int SourceWidth { get; } // dimensions OCR ran on (0 if unknown) — handy for exporters
public int SourceHeight { get; }
}
public sealed record OcrLine
{
public string Text { get; }
public double Confidence { get; } // 0..1
public IReadOnlyList<OcrPoint> BoundingPolygon { get; } // 4 corners
public OcrBoundingBox BoundingBox { get; } // MinX/MinY/MaxX/MaxY + Width/Height/Center
}
<br>
🧭 Core OCR
Input sources
OCR from a file path, a Stream, raw encoded bytes, or an already-decoded EasyImageSharp image:
await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage("photo.jpg", new[] { "en" });
await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage(stream, new[] { "en" });
await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage(File.ReadAllBytes("p"), new[] { "en" }); // byte[]
await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage(memory, new[] { "en" }); // ReadOnlyMemory<byte>
await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage(image, new[] { "en" }); // Image<Rgb24> (caller-owned)
All overloads accept an optional RecognitionOptions and a CancellationToken.
Recognition options
var options = new RecognitionOptions
{
Grouping = TextGrouping.Line, // Word | Line (default) | Paragraph
MinConfidence = 0.3, // drop results below this confidence
MaxDegreeOfParallelism = 8, // regions recognized concurrently (default: CPU count)
AdjustContrast = true, // low-confidence contrast-retry pass (EasyOCR's 2nd pass)
Region = null, // optional region of interest (see below)
};
var result = await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage("doc.png", new[] { "en" }, options);
| Grouping | Behaviour |
|---|---|
Word |
One result per detected box (≈ per word) |
Line |
Adjacent boxes merged into lines (default; matches EasyOCR) |
Paragraph |
Nearby lines merged into paragraph blocks |
Region of interest
Restrict OCR to a rectangle — ideal for a fixed field (price, license plate, banner) and faster than scanning the whole image. Boxes are always reported in the original image's coordinates.
// Absolute pixels:
var roi = new RecognitionOptions { Region = OcrRegion.Pixels(x: 40, y: 320, width: 500, height: 80) };
// Resolution-independent fractions — e.g. the bottom third:
var bottom = new RecognitionOptions { Region = OcrRegion.Fraction(0, 0.66, 1, 0.34) };
var result = await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage("receipt.png", new[] { "en" }, bottom);
Multiple languages
Pass several codes for mixed-script images — each region is read by every requested script pack and the highest-confidence result wins:
var result = await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage("street_sign.png", new[] { "en", "ch_sim", "ru" });
Each additional script family loads its own model, so request only the scripts you expect.
Right-to-left scripts
Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Uyghur and Hebrew pages are assembled right-to-left automatically — the right-most column is read first, and within a row the right-most fragment leads:
// Auto: every requested language is right-to-left, so the page is ordered right-to-left.
var result = await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage("invoice_ar.png", new[] { "ar" });
A mixed request stays left-to-right, since such a page is usually Latin-majority. Force the direction when a bilingual page really does flow right-to-left:
var result = await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage("form_ar_en.png", new[] { "ar", "en" }, new RecognitionOptions
{
ReadingDirection = TextReadingDirection.RightToLeft,
});
DocumentAnalysisOptions.ReadingDirection does the same for AnalyzeDocumentAsync.
This orders boxes — which column and which line comes first. It is not the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm, and does not need to be: each recognized line is already a logical-order string, so bidi stays your renderer's job and this output is correct input for one.
Automatic language detection
Don't know the language? Let the engine detect it — pass no codes and set AutoDetectLanguage:
var result = await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage("unknown.png", Array.Empty<string>(),
new RecognitionOptions { AutoDetectLanguage = true });
// Or just detect, without recognizing:
IReadOnlyList<string> langs = await ocr.DetectLanguagesAsync("unknown.png");
Detection samples the largest text regions and scores candidate script packs by confidence. Candidates default to a common set (Latin, Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean); widen them when you expect heavier scripts:
var opts = new RecognitionOptions
{
AutoDetectLanguage = true,
AutoDetectCandidates = new[] { "en", "ar", "hi", "ch_sim" },
};
Word & character geometry
Each line normally carries one polygon. Ask for WordLevelDetail and every line also reports its
words and, optionally, its characters — with real boxes derived from the recognizer's CTC
alignment (which timestep emitted which glyph), not estimated by splitting the line width.
var result = await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage("receipt.png", new[] { "en" }, new RecognitionOptions
{
WordLevelDetail = WordLevelDetail.Words, // or .Characters for per-glyph boxes
});
foreach (var word in result.Lines.SelectMany(l => l.Words))
Console.WriteLine($"{word.Text,-20} {word.Confidence:P0} {word.BoundingBox}");
Defaults to WordLevelDetail.None, so nothing changes — and costs nothing — unless you ask.
Rotated lines produce genuinely rotated word quads, and the hOCR / ALTO / TSV exporters and the
searchable-PDF text layer all sharpen automatically when word detail is present.
Streaming results
For multi-page documents or a responsive UI, take lines as they are recognized instead of waiting for the whole page:
await foreach (var line in ocr.ExtractTextStreamAsync("poster.png", new[] { "en" }))
Console.WriteLine(line.Text); // arrives as each region finishes
✍️ Handwriting (TrOCR)
Handwritten text needs a different model than printed text — EasyOCR's CRNN recognizers are trained on
printed glyphs and cannot read cursive at all. Switch it on and call RecognizeHandwritingAsync:
var service = new EasyOcrService(new EasyOcrServiceOptions
{
Handwriting = HandwritingOptions.Default, // that's it
});
var notes = await service.RecognizeHandwritingAsync("handwritten-note.png");
The TrOCR models download into the same model cache as everything else on the first handwriting call,
checksum-verified like the rest. Handwriting is null by default, so a service that doesn't ask
for it never downloads a byte and behaves exactly as before.
Handwriting = new HandwritingOptions
{
Quantize = false, // full precision (~1.5 GB) instead of the int8 default (~520 MB)
BeamWidth = 4, // 1 = greedy (default)
},
Quantize defaults to true: int8 weights are a third of the size and roughly twice as fast, at a
small accuracy cost on unusual words. Full precision is the more accurate of the two — worth the extra
download for archival work.
The hosted weights are an ONNX export of Microsoft's MIT-licensed
trocr-base-handwritten, produced by
tools/export_trocr_onnx.py.
Using your own export instead. Any standard Optimum TrOCR
export works — an encoder taking pixel_values, a decoder taking input_ids + encoder_hidden_states
(with or without past_key_values caching), and a byte-level BPE vocabulary — so you can swap in
trocr-base-printed, a larger checkpoint, or your own fine-tune. Point the three paths at it and
nothing is ever downloaded:
// Explicit paths…
Handwriting = new HandwritingOptions
{
EncoderModelPath = "models/trocr/encoder_model.onnx",
DecoderModelPath = "models/trocr/decoder_model.onnx",
TokenizerPath = "models/trocr/vocab.json",
};
// …or a folder holding those three conventional file names.
Handwriting = HandwritingOptions.FromDirectory("models/trocr"),
Setting only some paths is fine: whatever you leave null is fetched from the hosted set, so you can override just the decoder and keep the rest.
For long lines you can point DecoderModelPath at a decoder_model_merged.onnx — the runtime detects
the past_key_values inputs and uses KV caching automatically. Do not use
decoder_with_past_model.onnx on its own; it is the second half of a two-file pipeline and consumes
caches it never produces.
Note the checkpoint is fine-tuned on handwriting: it reads printed text too, but the dedicated printed recognizers are better at that.
🔳 Barcodes & QR codes
Documents that need OCR usually carry codes too. Read them from the same image, with no OCR model involved:
foreach (var code in await BarcodeScanner.ReadBarcodesAsync("label.png",
new BarcodeOptions { MultipleCodes = true }))
{
Console.WriteLine($"{code.Format}: {code.Text}");
}
// …or both in one pass
var page = await ocr.ExtractTextAndBarcodesAsync("label.png", new[] { "en" });
Console.WriteLine($"{page.Ocr.Lines.Count} lines, {page.Barcodes.Count} codes");
BarcodeOptions covers Formats, TryHarder, MultipleCodes, TryInverted, AutoRotate and a
Region restriction.
<br>
📄 Documents, scans & PDF
Scanned-document preprocessing
For photos and scans, enable clean-up via RecognitionOptions.Preprocessing:
var opts = new RecognitionOptions
{
Preprocessing = new PreprocessingOptions
{
Deskew = true, // straighten small tilt (±15°)
DetectOrientation = true, // fix 90°/180°/270° rotation (≈4× cost)
Binarize = true, // adaptive black/white for uneven lighting
Denoise = true, // suppress scanner speckle
Sharpen = true, // unsharp-mask for soft / low-DPI scans (SharpenAmount tunes strength)
},
};
var result = await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage("scan.jpg", new[] { "en" }, opts);
Two model-based document steps are also available — small dedicated neural models that download on first use (SHA256-verified like every other model):
var docOpts = new RecognitionOptions
{
Preprocessing = new PreprocessingOptions
{
DocumentOrientation = true, // PP-LCNet doc classifier: fixes 90°/180°/270° in ONE tiny model
// pass — much cheaper than DetectOrientation's 4× OCR
DocumentUnwarp = true, // UVDoc: dewarps curved/folded pages (photographed book pages,
// creased receipts) before OCR
},
};
Coordinate spaces.
DetectOrientationreads the page at whichever 90°/180°/270° rotation scores best, then maps the boxes back onto your original image — results stay anchored to the input you passed and agree with the reportedSourceWidth/SourceHeight. The model-basedDocumentOrientation/DocumentUnwarpsteps instead hand the whole pipeline a corrected page, so their boxes (andSourceWidth/SourceHeight) are in that corrected image's coordinate space.
🧱 Document structure & tables
Beyond plain text OCR, AnalyzeDocumentAsync recovers a page's structure — layout regions,
tables (as HTML), formulas (as LaTeX), seals/stamps, and reading order — powered by PaddleOCR's
PP-StructureV3 models, running on an engine built into this package (no extra dependency; the models
download on first use):
using var ocr = new EasyOcrService();
var doc = await ocr.AnalyzeDocumentAsync("report_page.png");
foreach (var block in doc.Blocks) // in reading order
{
Console.WriteLine($"{block.Order}: {block.Type} @ {block.Bounds}");
if (block.TableHtml is not null) // tables come back as structured HTML
Console.WriteLine(block.TableHtml);
}
string markdown = doc.ToMarkdown(); // whole page as Markdown (tables included)
string json = doc.ToJson();
Tune what runs with DocumentAnalysisOptions (all models download on demand, SHA256-verified):
var doc = await ocr.AnalyzeDocumentAsync("scan.jpg", new DocumentAnalysisOptions
{
DocumentOrientation = true, // upright a rotated page first
DocumentUnwarp = true, // dewarp a curved/folded page first
RecognizeTables = true, // table structure as HTML (default on)
RecognizeFormulas = false, // skip LaTeX formula recognition
RecognizeSeals = false, // skip seal/stamp recognition
TableModel = DocumentTableModel.SlaNeXt,// higher-accuracy table model (default: SlanetPlus)
Languages = new[] { "en" }, // text language(s); default pack covers ch/en/ja
});
The layout detector's own behaviour is tunable too. It emits a fixed top-k of candidate boxes with no NMS, so the same area of a page is routinely proposed several times under different labels; the duplicate filter is on by default and matters more the further you lower the confidence floor:
var doc = await ocr.AnalyzeDocumentAsync("scan.jpg", new DocumentAnalysisOptions
{
LayoutScoreThreshold = 0.25f, // confidence floor, default 0.5; lower keeps faint regions
FilterOverlappingRegions = true, // collapse duplicate/near-duplicate regions (default on)
LayoutNms = true, // additionally run NMS over the regions (default off)
LayoutUnclipRatio = 1.05f, // grow each region 5% before recognition (default: none)
LayoutMergeMode = DocumentLayoutMergeMode.Large, // keep the enclosing block of a nested pair
ReadingOrder = DocumentReadingOrder.XyCut, // ignore the model's predicted order
});
ReadingOrder defaults to Auto: PP-DocLayoutV3 predicts a reading-order index alongside each box
and that is what orders the blocks; models that emit no such column fall back to the geometric XY-cut
orderer, which XyCut selects unconditionally.
The analyzer shares the service's execution provider, thread limits, cache path (when set) and download-resilience settings, loads lazily on first use, and is disposed with the service. Regular OCR calls never touch it.
📑 PDF input & searchable PDF
OCR scanned PDFs and emit searchable PDFs — built into the main package (no extra install needed). Pages are rasterized with PDFium and processed one at a time, so memory stays low even on large documents.
using EasyOcrSharp.Pdf;
await using var ocr = new EasyOcrService();
// 1) Extract text from every page:
PdfOcrResult doc = await ocr.ExtractTextFromPdfAsync("scan.pdf", new[] { "en" });
Console.WriteLine(doc.FullText);
foreach (var page in doc.Pages)
Console.WriteLine($"Page {page.PageNumber}: {page.Ocr.Lines.Count} lines");
// 2) Produce a searchable PDF (original pages + invisible, selectable text layer):
await ocr.CreateSearchablePdfAsync("scan.pdf", "scan.searchable.pdf", new[] { "en" },
pdfOptions: new PdfOcrOptions { Dpi = 250, JpegQuality = 80 });
PdfOcrOptions controls render Dpi, searchable-PDF JpegQuality, and a per-page Progress
callback.
Unicode text layers
The invisible text layer uses the base-14 Helvetica font for Latin-1 text, and automatically switches
to an embedded, subsetted Type0 / Identity-H font (with a ToUnicode CMap) when the recognized
text needs it — so Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Devanagari, Thai and Greek PDFs are genuinely
searchable and copy-pasteable.
var (result, pdf) = await ocr.CreateSearchablePdfAsync(bytes, new[] { "ch_sim" }, pdfOptions: new()
{
TextLayerFont = PdfTextLayerFontMode.Auto, // Auto | Never | Always
TextLayerFontPath = "/usr/share/fonts/noto/NotoSansCJK-Regular.ttc", // optional
});
if (result.TextLayerFontStatus == PdfTextLayerFontStatus.Unavailable)
logger.LogWarning("No font covered this script — the text layer fell back to Latin-1.");
No font is bundled — a CJK font alone is tens of megabytes. Either point
TextLayerFontPathat one, or let the built-in probe find an installed system font. If nothing suitable exists the output falls back to the old Helvetica layer rather than failing, andTextLayerFontStatustells you so.
🖼️ Multi-frame TIFF
Scanners emit multi-page TIFFs. Read every frame, not just the first:
var doc = await ocr.ExtractTextFromFramesAsync("scan.tif", new[] { "en" });
Console.WriteLine($"{doc.Frames.Count} frames in {doc.Duration.TotalSeconds:0.0}s");
// or stream them, so a 200-page TIFF starts producing results immediately
await foreach (var frame in ocr.StreamTextFromFramesAsync("scan.tif", new[] { "en" }))
Console.WriteLine($"page {frame.FrameIndex}: {frame.Ocr.FullText}");
The pixel-flood guard applies per frame, MaxFrames bounds the document, and a single-frame image
flows through the same call and returns exactly one result.
📊 Tables as data
AnalyzeDocumentAsync recovers tables as HTML. Turn them into something .NET can use:
var structure = await ocr.AnalyzeDocumentAsync("invoice.png");
foreach (var table in structure.Tables())
{
IReadOnlyList<IReadOnlyList<string>> rows = table.ToRows();
DataTable dt = table.ToDataTable(); // header row detected from <th>
string csv = table.ToCsv(); // RFC 4180 quoting
}
Merged cells are expanded into repeated values, HTML entities are decoded, and malformed markup is tolerated rather than thrown on.
<br>
🔌 Output & integration
Output formats (hOCR / ALTO / TSV / JSON)
Any OcrResult converts to the interchange formats DMS and archival pipelines expect:
using EasyOcrSharp.Export;
using var img = Image.Load<Rgb24>("page.png");
var result = await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage(img, new[] { "en" });
string hocr = result.ToHocr(pageWidth: img.Width, pageHeight: img.Height); // hOCR (HTML)
string alto = result.ToAlto(pageWidth: img.Width, pageHeight: img.Height); // ALTO XML v4
string tsv = result.ToTsv(); // Tesseract-style TSV
string json = result.ToJson(indented: true); // AOT-safe JSON
ToJson uses a source-generated EasyOcrJsonContext, so it works in trimmed / Native-AOT apps with
no reflection warnings. Recognized text is written verbatim in every script — Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic,
CJK and the rest stay readable in a plain text editor instead of turning into \uXXXX escapes —
while HTML-sensitive characters (< > & ' +) are still escaped, since a block's TableHtml may end up
embedded in a page. Pass your own JsonSerializerOptions for a different encoder, indentation or naming
policy (StructureResult.ToJson takes the same overload), and the exporter stays reflection-free:
string strict = result.ToJson(new JsonSerializerOptions
{
Encoder = JavaScriptEncoder.Default, // back to \uXXXX escaping for every non-ASCII character
WriteIndented = true,
});
Recognize from known boxes
If you already have regions — from DetectRegionsAsync, a previous run, or your own layout analysis —
recognize them directly and skip detection (EasyOCR's recognize()):
using var image = Image.Load<Rgb24>("form.png");
// e.g. reuse a detection pass, or pass your own polygons (pixel coordinates):
IReadOnlyList<DetectedRegion> regions = await ocr.DetectRegionsAsync(image);
OcrResult result = await ocr.RecognizeRegionsAsync(image, regions, new[] { "en" });
There's also an overload taking raw polygons (IEnumerable<IReadOnlyList<OcrPoint>>).
Detection-only & visualization
Locate text regions without recognizing them — fast and language-independent, ideal for layout analysis, redaction, or cropping fields before a targeted recognition pass:
IReadOnlyList<DetectedRegion> regions = await ocr.DetectRegionsAsync("form.png");
Draw the boxes onto a copy of the image for debugging (no extra dependency; original is untouched):
using EasyOcrSharp.Export;
using var img = Image.Load<Rgb24>("page.png");
var result = await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage(img, new[] { "en" });
using var annotated = img.DrawAnnotations(result, new Rgb24(255, 0, 0), thickness: 2);
await annotated.SaveAsync("page.annotated.png");
Batch processing
Process a folder or queue with bounded concurrency. Results stream as they complete; a failed image is captured (not thrown), so one bad file never aborts the batch:
var files = Directory.EnumerateFiles("inbox", "*.png");
await foreach (var item in ocr.ExtractTextFromImagesAsync(files, new[] { "en" }, maxConcurrency: 4))
{
if (item.Succeeded) Console.WriteLine($"{item.Source}: {item.Result!.Lines.Count} lines");
else Console.Error.WriteLine($"{item.Source} failed: {item.Error!.Message}");
}
🖍️ Redaction
Find sensitive text and permanently destroy those pixels — the region is painted over, not covered by an annotation someone can remove:
var redacted = await ocr.RedactAsync("statement.png", new[] { "en" }, new RedactionOptions
{
Rules = RedactionPatterns.Common, // email, phone, card, IBAN, SSN, long digit runs
Keywords = new[] { "Account Holder" },
Style = RedactionStyle.FilledBox, // or Blur / Pixelate
Scope = RedactionScope.MatchedWords, // only the matched words, not the whole line
});
await redacted.Image.SaveAsync("statement.redacted.png");
Console.WriteLine($"{redacted.RedactedRegionCount} regions removed");
Console.WriteLine(redacted.SanitizedText); // the text with matches masked out
// PDFs too
var safe = await ocr.RedactPdfAsync(pdfBytes, new[] { "en" }, options);
The card and IBAN presets are validated, not just matched: CreditCard applies a Luhn check and
Iban a mod-97 check, so a random 16-digit order number is not mistaken for a card number.
🧾 Field extraction
Pull structured values out of invoices, receipts and forms using the label positions OCR already produced — no LLM involved:
var result = await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage("invoice.png", new[] { "en" });
var fields = result.ExtractFields(new[]
{
FieldPresets.InvoiceNumber,
FieldPresets.InvoiceDate,
FieldPresets.Total,
new FieldDefinition
{
Name = "Customer PO",
Anchors = new[] { "Customer PO", "PO Number" },
Direction = FieldDirection.Right | FieldDirection.Below,
},
});
foreach (var f in fields)
Console.WriteLine($"{f.Name}: {f.Value} ({f.Confidence:P0})");
Anchor matching is fuzzy, so OCR damage like Totai still resolves; distances are expressed as
multiples of the anchor's line height, so the same definition works at any resolution; and a plain
"Total: 42.00" on one line is extracted without any geometry at all.
<br>
🎯 Accuracy & tuning
Constrained fields (allow/block-lists & detection thresholds)
For fixed-format fields, restrict the character set — this sharply cuts errors:
// Digits only (invoice totals, IDs, meter readings):
var digits = new RecognitionOptions { Allowlist = "0123456789.," };
// License plate (upper-case + digits):
var plate = new RecognitionOptions { Allowlist = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789-" };
var total = await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage("receipt.png", new[] { "en" }, digits);
Use Blocklist to forbid specific characters instead. For hard inputs, the CRAFT detector thresholds
are exposed via RecognitionOptions.Detection (defaults match EasyOCR):
var opts = new RecognitionOptions
{
Detection = new DetectionOptions
{
TextThreshold = 0.6, // lower → catch fainter text
LowText = 0.3, // lower → keep more of each glyph
MagRatio = 1.5, // enlarge before detection (small text)
},
};
Decoders, rotation & batching
Switch the CTC decoder, recognize rotated text, or batch boxes through the model — all via
RecognitionOptions (every option defaults to the previous behaviour):
var opts = new RecognitionOptions
{
Decoder = DecoderType.BeamSearch, // Greedy (default) | BeamSearch | WordBeamSearch
BeamWidth = 10, // explored hypotheses (beam decoders)
RotationInfo = new[] { 90, 270 }, // also try each box rotated; keep the best reading
BatchSize = 16, // batch boxes through one ONNX run (see note below)
};
var result = await ocr.ExtractTextFromImage("rotated_labels.png", new[] { "en" }, opts);
BatchSizenote. Batching needs a batch-capable recognizer export; the currently hosted models are exported with batch fixed at 1, soBatchSize > 1transparently falls back to per-box inference today (results are unaffected). Per-box recognition already runs concurrently — tune throughput withMaxDegreeOfParallelism.
WordBeamSearch constrains output to a lexicon you supply, which is powerful for closed vocabularies
(part numbers, place names, a product catalogue):
var opts = new RecognitionOptions
{
Decoder = DecoderType.WordBeamSearch,
Dictionary = new[] { "INVOICE", "TOTAL", "SUBTOTAL", "TAX" },
};
Custom recognizers
Register your own exported CRNN ONNX model (e.g. a fine-tuned EasyOCR recog_network) for chosen
language codes. A custom recognizer takes precedence over the built-in pack and is loaded straight
from disk — never downloaded:
var options = new EasyOcrServiceOptions();
options.CustomRecognizers.Add(new CustomRecognizer
{
Name = "my_meter_reader",
ModelPath = @"D:\models\meter_g2.onnx",
VocabPath = @"D:\models\meter_g2.vocab.json", // or set Characters = "0123456789." inline
Languages = new[] { "en" }, // claim the codes it should handle
});
await using var ocr = new EasyOcrService(options);
Fine-tuning grouping & contrast
The thresholds that merge boxes into lines/paragraphs and trigger the contrast-retry pass are exposed for difficult layouts (defaults reproduce EasyOCR's behaviour):
var opts = new RecognitionOptions
{
GroupingOptions = new GroupingOptions
{
SlopeThreshold = 0.1, // tolerate gently tilted lines (slope_ths)
YCenterThreshold = 0.5, // vertical tolerance for same-line boxes (ycenter_ths)
WidthThreshold = 1.0, // max horizontal gap to merge on a line (width_ths)
ParagraphYThreshold = 1.0, // vertical reach when forming paragraphs (y_ths)
},
ContrastThreshold = 0.1, // re-recognize below this confidence (contrast_ths)
AdjustContrastTarget = 0.5, // grey-stretch target for the retry pass (adjust_contrast)
};
Quantized models
Set Quantize to fetch the int8-quantized recognizers instead of the float ones — EasyOCR's
quantize=True, for smaller downloads:
await using var ocr = new EasyOcrService(new EasyOcrServiceOptions { Quantize = true });
The int8 variants are hosted alongside the float models and SHA256-verified on download, and text
output is effectively unchanged. The win is vocabulary-dependent: ONNX Runtime (CPU) int8-quantizes
the matmul/linear layers but not the BiLSTM/convolutions, so large-vocabulary packs shrink most
(e.g. zh_sim ~22 → ~16 MB) while small-vocabulary packs change little. The detector stays float (as
in EasyOCR). Opt-in; the float models are the default.
Post-OCR correction
Fix the recognizer's mistakes with a domain lexicon — while leaving text it was confident about completely alone:
var corrected = result.Correct(new CorrectionOptions
{
Dictionary = File.ReadLines("part-numbers.txt").ToArray(),
MaxEditDistance = 2,
MinConfidenceToCorrect = 0.85, // only touch tokens the model itself flagged as shaky
Normalizers = new[] { FieldNormalizers.Iban(), FieldNormalizers.Date() },
});
Candidate ranking is weighted by the confusions OCR actually makes (0/O, 1/l/I, 5/S,
8/B, rn/m). The normalizers go further than validation: where a checksum identifies the wrong
character — IBAN mod-97, ICAO 9303 MRZ check digits — they repair it. Correct never mutates the
input; it returns a new OcrResult.
Measuring accuracy (CER / WER)
double cer = result.CharacterErrorRate(expectedText);
double wer = result.WordErrorRate(expectedText);
var report = result.Compare(expectedText, TextComparisonOptions.Relaxed);
Console.WriteLine($"CER {report.CharacterErrorRate:P2} — " +
$"{report.Characters.Substitutions} sub, " +
$"{report.Characters.Insertions} ins, " +
$"{report.Characters.Deletions} del");
Useful for benchmarking a preprocessing change or a decoder setting against your own documents rather than trusting a generic accuracy claim.
<br>
📊 Production & operations
GPU & execution providers
GPU is automatic. ExecutionProvider defaults to Auto: on the first run EasyOcrSharp asks ONNX
Runtime what accelerators are actually present and uses the best one, falling back to CPU when there's
none. You don't pick a provider — you just install the package for the hardware you have:
| Install this package | What Auto enables |
|---|---|
EasyOcrSharp (base) |
CPU only |
EasyOcrSharp.Gpu |
NVIDIA CUDA (needs CUDA 12+ on PATH) |
Why a separate package? The ONNX Runtime variants ship the same
onnxruntime.dllcompiled with different providers, so only one can be referenced at a time — and the CUDA build is several hundred MB. Shipping it as an opt-in package keeps the base library small and cross-platform;Autothen lights up whatever you installed.
// Nothing to configure — add the EasyOcrSharp.Gpu package and a GPU is used if present.
await using var ocr = new EasyOcrService();
You can still pin a provider explicitly (e.g. to force CPU, or to require CUDA) and set ONNX Runtime thread limits:
await using var ocr = new EasyOcrService(new EasyOcrServiceOptions
{
ExecutionProvider = OcrExecutionProvider.Cuda, // Auto (default) | Cpu | Cuda | CoreMl
IntraOpNumThreads = 4, // cap CPU use in multi-tenant servers (null = runtime default)
});
| Provider | Package | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Auto |
(any) | Default. Probes the runtime; uses the best installed accelerator, else CPU |
Cpu |
(built-in) | Always available |
Cuda |
EasyOcrSharp.Gpu |
NVIDIA, CUDA 12+ on PATH |
CoreMl |
CoreML-enabled ORT build | macOS / Apple Silicon |
Any non-CPU provider falls back to CPU automatically (with a logged warning) if its runtime is
missing or the device fails to initialize — your app keeps working. The legacy useGpu: true flag
still works and forces CUDA. Check ocr.UseGpu to see whether an accelerator was selected.
GPU upgrade hint. When Auto runs on CPU but a real NVIDIA GPU is physically present, EasyOcrSharp
detects it and can tell you the exact package to add — EasyOcrSharp.Gpu. It's silent by default:
the hint is exposed as a property you can surface yourself, and nothing is logged unless you opt in with
LogGpuHint = true.
// Silent by default — read it only if you want to nudge the user yourself:
await using var ocr = new EasyOcrService();
if (ocr.GpuAccelerationHint is { } hint) Console.WriteLine(hint);
// e.g. "EasyOcrSharp: an NVIDIA GPU was detected but OCR is running on CPU. Install the
// 'EasyOcrSharp.Gpu' NuGet package for CUDA acceleration. ..."
// Opt in to a one-time startup warning in the logs instead:
await using var verbose = new EasyOcrService(new EasyOcrServiceOptions { LogGpuHint = true });
Observability & health checks
EasyOcrSharp emits OpenTelemetry-ready metrics and traces, always-on with near-zero cost when nobody is listening:
builder.Services.AddOpenTelemetry()
.WithMetrics(m => m.AddMeter(EasyOcrDiagnostics.MeterName))
.WithTracing(t => t.AddSource(EasyOcrDiagnostics.ActivitySourceName));
| Instrument | What it tells you |
|---|---|
easyocr.operations |
operation count — including failures, so an erroring deployment shows a rising error rate rather than going quiet |
easyocr.duration |
wall-clock latency per operation (ms) |
easyocr.lines / easyocr.pages |
throughput: lines recognized, pages/frames processed |
easyocr.operations.active / .queued |
live saturation — how many are executing vs waiting for a slot |
easyocr.queue.wait |
how long operations wait for a slot before running or being shed |
easyocr.model.loads / .download_bytes |
ONNX sessions created, model bytes fetched |
Every operation instrument is tagged, so a dashboard can slice latency and error rate by
easyocr.operation (extract, extract_stream, recognize, detect, handwriting,
analyze_document, pdf, multi_frame, …), easyocr.outcome (success, error, canceled,
timeout, shed), easyocr.languages, easyocr.provider (Cpu / Cuda / …) and — on failures —
error.type. The constants are public (EasyOcrDiagnostics.TagNames, .Outcomes, .OperationNames), so
alert rules can reference them instead of hard-coded strings:
// error rate, excluding client cancellations
sum(rate(easyocr_operations_total{easyocr_outcome=~"error|timeout"}[5m]))
/ sum(rate(easyocr_operations_total[5m]))
Add a readiness probe that reports whether the models for your languages are cached (so the first real request won't block on a download):
builder.Services.AddHealthChecks()
.AddEasyOcrHealthCheck(languages: new[] { "en" });
That check is a file-presence check, which cannot catch a model that is present but broken — a truncated download, a half-copied cache, or a GPU whose provider fails at session init. All three report Healthy and then fail every request. Opt into a deep probe that actually runs a tiny synthetic page through the real pipeline once, caches the verdict, and reports the provider that genuinely resolved:
builder.Services.AddEasyOcrWarmUp("en"); // IHostedService: loads models off the startup path
builder.Services.AddHealthChecks()
.AddEasyOcrHealthCheck(languages: ["en"], name: "easyocr-live") // shallow: liveness
.AddEasyOcrHealthCheck(new EasyOcrHealthCheckOptions { DeepProbe = true },
languages: ["en"], name: "easyocr-ready"); // deep: readiness
The probe never triggers a download — if the models aren't cached it reports that instead, so Offline
deployments behave unchanged. When AddEasyOcrWarmUp is registered, readiness stays not ready until
warm-up finishes, so an orchestrator won't route traffic to a pod that is still loading. Warm-up failure
is never fatal: it is logged and surfaced through the check, and models still load lazily on first use.
Dependency injection
services.AddEasyOcrSharp(o =>
{
o.ModelCachePath = "/var/cache/easyocr";
// GPU is automatic (ExecutionProvider = Auto). To force CPU in a multi-tenant host:
// o.ExecutionProvider = OcrExecutionProvider.Cpu;
});
public class ReceiptParser(IEasyOcrService ocr) { /* inject anywhere */ }
Registered as a singleton — ONNX sessions are expensive to build and thread-safe to reuse.
Hardening & resource limits
When OCR-ing untrusted images or PDFs, EasyOcrSharp guards against decompression-bomb / pixel-flood
denial of service. The defaults are generous; raise them if you legitimately process larger inputs, or
set them to 0 to disable a guard.
await using var ocr = new EasyOcrService(new EasyOcrServiceOptions
{
MaxImagePixels = 100_000_000, // reject images over 100 MP from the header, before decode (default)
});
var pdfOptions = new PdfOcrOptions
{
MaxPages = 5000, // reject documents with more pages (default)
MaxPageMegapixels = 200, // reject a page that would rasterize larger at the chosen DPI (default)
};
Failures surface as typed exceptions (all derive EasyOcrSharpException, so a catch-all still works):
| Exception | When |
|---|---|
ImageTooLargeException |
image exceeds MaxImagePixels |
PdfProcessingException |
corrupt / encrypted PDF, or a page/size guard tripped |
ModelDownloadException |
download failed, or a non-HTTPS / malformed model source |
ModelChecksumException |
downloaded model failed (or lacks) SHA256 verification |
OfflineModelMissingException |
model not cached and Offline = true |
OcrBusyException |
at MaxConcurrentOperations and no slot freed within QueueTimeout |
OcrTimeoutException |
a single operation exceeded OperationTimeout |
Concurrency, back-pressure & operation timeouts
ONNX sessions are thread-safe to share, but every concurrent run allocates its own tensors — so concurrency, not session count, is what sets peak memory. An ungoverned service handed fifty 12 MP scans at once doesn't get slower in a straight line: every request crawls, all of them eventually time out, and the working set grows until the container is OOM-killed. Both guards are off by default, so nothing changes until you opt in:
await using var ocr = new EasyOcrService(new EasyOcrServiceOptions
{
MaxConcurrentOperations = Environment.ProcessorCount, // 0 (default) = unlimited
QueueTimeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30), // then shed with OcrBusyException
OperationTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(2), // 0 (default) = no cap
});
QueueTimeout defaults to Timeout.InfiniteTimeSpan — a concurrency limit on its own bounds memory
but still queues everything, so shedding is a second, deliberate opt-in. Set it to enable back-pressure;
TimeSpan.Zero refuses the moment the limit is saturated. Waits longer than ~49.7 days (the platform's
timer ceiling) are treated as "wait forever" rather than throwing.
Once it is set, operations past the limit wait up to QueueTimeout for a slot and are then refused
promptly rather than queued without bound — a caller told "busy" in 30 seconds can retry or fail over,
one silently queued for four minutes cannot. Map it straight onto HTTP:
catch (OcrBusyException ex) { return Results.Json(..., statusCode: 503); } // + Retry-After
catch (OcrTimeoutException ex) { return Results.Json(..., statusCode: 504); }
OperationTimeout exists because a CancellationToken only helps when something signals it — a
pathological page (thousands of detected boxes, an image that defeats the detector) otherwise occupies a
worker forever, and a handful of those take a fixed-size pool down. The cap is cooperative: it cancels
the pipeline at its next checkpoint rather than aborting a thread, so set it comfortably above your p99
page time. Note a multi-page PDF is one operation, not one per page.
OcrTimeoutException is deliberately distinct from OperationCanceledException: the first means this
input was too slow and should be quarantined, the second means your own caller hung up. Only the primitive
per-image operations take a slot; PDF, multi-frame and batch runs are gated per page as they go, so a long
document can't hold a slot hostage for its whole duration.
Warm-up (remove cold-start latency). Preload the detector and recognizer packs so the first real request doesn't pay model-download + session-init latency — ideal for serverless / scale-out:
await ocr.WarmUp(new[] { "en" }); // downloads + initializes once, up front
Resilient & offline model downloads
Model downloads are production-hardened: atomic, SHA256-verified, resumable (HTTP range), and
retried with exponential backoff. By default the model source must be HTTPS and every model must
have a known checksum. Tune everything via ModelDownloadOptions:
await using var ocr = new EasyOcrService(new EasyOcrServiceOptions
{
Download = new ModelDownloadOptions
{
MaxRetries = 5,
Offline = false, // true = never download; fail fast if not cached
BaseUrlOverride = "https://mirror.corp/ocr", // private mirror (must be https unless opted out)
HttpClientFactory = () => httpClientFactory.CreateClient("ocr"), // proxy / corporate certs
// AllowInsecureModelSource = true, // permit a plain-http mirror you control
// AllowUnverifiedModels = true, // permit unlisted models that have no registry checksum
Progress = new Progress<ModelDownloadProgress>(p =>
Console.WriteLine($"{p.FileName}: {p.Fraction:P0}")),
},
});
For air-gapped deployments, pre-seed the cache and set Offline = true — a missing model then
throws a clear error instead of attempting a download.
🖥️ Command-line tool
dotnet tool install -g EasyOcrSharp.Cli
# recognize an image, a folder, or a glob
easyocrsharp scan receipt.png
easyocrsharp scan scans/ -r -l en,de --format json -o out/
# make a scanned PDF searchable
easyocrsharp pdf scan.pdf -o searchable.pdf
# pre-download models for an air-gapped host, then check what's there
easyocrsharp models pull en,fr
easyocrsharp models list
easyocrsharp models path
# versions, active execution provider, GPU status, cache location
easyocrsharp info
scan writes results to stdout and errors to stderr so it pipes cleanly, exits non-zero on failure,
and accepts the same tuning as the library (--allowlist, --min-confidence, --paragraph,
--preprocess deskew,binarize,sharpen, --gpu, --jobs). Add --help to any command.
🌐 Web service sample
samples/EasyOcrSharp.WebApi is a runnable ASP.NET Core service —
POST /ocr, POST /ocr/pdf, GET /health and a browser upload page — with bounded concurrency,
upload limits, problem-details errors and a Dockerfile that already includes the native prerequisites
PDFium and ONNX Runtime need.
dotnet run --project samples/EasyOcrSharp.WebApi
curl -X POST "http://localhost:5000/ocr?lang=en&format=text" -F "file=@receipt.png"
<br>
📚 Reference
🌍 Supported languages
Languages are grouped by script; one recognizer covers an entire group, so ["en","es","fr"]
loads a single model. Pack sizes vary widely with the network each script was trained on — some are a
few MB, some ~210 MB — which affects first-run download size only, not runtime behaviour.
| Pack | Size | Languages |
|---|---|---|
latin_g2 |
~15 MB | af, az, bs, cs, cy, da, de, en, es, et, fr, ga, hr, hu, id, is, it, ku, la, lt, lv, mi, ms, mt, nl, no, oc, pi, pl, pt, ro, rs_latin, sk, sl, sq, sv, sw, tl, tr, uz, vi |
cyrillic_g2 |
~15 MB | ru, rs_cyrillic, be, bg, uk, mn, abq, ady, kbd, ava, dar, inh, che, lbe, lez, tab, tjk |
zh_sim_g2 |
~22 MB | ch_sim |
korean_g2 |
~16 MB | ko |
japanese_g2 |
~17 MB | ja |
telugu_g2 |
~15 MB | te |
kannada_g2 |
~15 MB | kn |
arabic_g2 |
~210 MB | ar, fa, ug, ur |
devanagari_g2 |
~210 MB | hi, mr, ne, bh, mai, ang, bho, mah, sck, new, gom, sa, bgc |
bengali_g2 |
~210 MB | bn, as, mni |
thai_g1 |
~210 MB | th |
tamil_g1 |
~210 MB | ta |
zh_tra_g1 |
~215 MB | ch_tra |
That's all 86 languages EasyOCR supports, mapped exactly to the model each was trained on.
Not supported: Greek (
el) and Hebrew (he) — upstream EasyOCR ships no model for either script, so they cannot be exported.
How model downloads work
EasyOcrSharp ships no models in the NuGet package. On the first call for a language it downloads, into a local cache:
- CRAFT detector (
craft_mlt_25k.onnx, ~80 MB) — shared by all languages, downloaded once. - CRNN recognizer for the language's script pack (e.g.
latin_g2.onnx). - A small vocabulary sidecar (
<pack>.vocab.json).
Every file is SHA256-verified against a checksum baked into the library, so corrupted or tampered downloads are rejected. Models are hosted on Hugging Face.
Default cache: %LOCALAPPDATA%\EasyOcrSharp\models (Windows) or the platform equivalent. Override it:
await using var ocr = new EasyOcrService(modelCachePath: @"D:\MyApp\Models");
EASYOCRSHARP_CACHE=/var/cache/easyocr # cache directory
EASYOCRSHARP_MODEL_BASE_URL=https://files.mycorp.example/ocr # private/offline mirror
# AnalyzeDocumentAsync's structure models are cached in the same directory but resolved
# through their own pair, so a mirror can serve them separately:
EASYOCRSHARP_STRUCTURE_CACHE=/var/cache/easyocr
EASYOCRSHARP_STRUCTURE_MODEL_BASE_URL=https://files.mycorp.example/ocr
Offline / air-gapped: pre-seed your cache directory with the
.onnx+.vocab.jsonfiles from the model repo — no network is needed at runtime.
Accuracy notes
EasyOcrSharp reproduces EasyOCR's pipeline faithfully — aspect-preserving resize, normalization, a low-confidence contrast-retry pass, CRAFT box dilation, perspective de-warping of rotated text, and CTC decoding (greedy by default, with optional beam / word-beam search) — so output matches upstream EasyOCR. On top of that:
- Reading order is column-aware and bands rows by a line-height-relative tolerance, so headings, high-DPI scans, and multi-column pages come out in natural reading order.
- Overlapping detections are de-duplicated with IoU NMS (
DetectionOptions.NmsIouThreshold, default0.6; set0to disable). - On multi-language requests, scoring is biased toward the page's dominant script so an over-confident wrong-script pack can't hijack individual boxes.
As with any OCR:
- Visually identical glyphs (capital
Ivs lowercasel,$vs8) can be confused. - Handwriting and low-resolution / low-contrast text are harder than clean printed text.
- Right-to-left scripts (Arabic) are returned in the model's character order.
Building & testing
git clone https://github.com/FarhanLodi/EasyOcrSharp.git
cd EasyOcrSharp
dotnet build -c Release
# Everything — unit + real end-to-end integration tests. Downloads the models on first run
# and reports a pass/fail summary:
dotnet test
# Fast unit tests only (no models, no network):
dotnet test --filter "Category!=Integration"
# Only the model-backed integration tests:
dotnet test --filter "Category=Integration"
# Interactive console demo:
dotnet run --project test/EasyOcrSharp.Demo
The integration tests exercise every feature against the real engine (allow/block-lists,
detection-only, exporters, batch, metrics/tracing, health check, execution-provider fallback, and the
full PDF pipeline) — no mocks. The PDF fixtures live in
test/assets/pdf/ and are
committed, so those tests run out of the box. A couple of tests still skip (never fail) until you
supply an optional fixture — a password-protected PDF named e.g. encrypted_secret.pdf for the
encrypted-document path, and EASYOCRSHARP_TROCR_DIR pointing at a TrOCR export for the handwriting
integration test.
| Path | Purpose |
|---|---|
src/EasyOcrSharp |
the core library (includes PDF input + searchable-PDF output) |
src/EasyOcrSharp.Gpu |
CUDA execution-provider package |
src/EasyOcrSharp.Cli |
the easyocrsharp command-line tool (dotnet tool) |
samples/EasyOcrSharp.WebApi |
ASP.NET Core service sample + Dockerfile |
test/EasyOcrSharp.Tests |
xUnit unit + integration tests |
test/EasyOcrSharp.Demo |
interactive console demo |
test/assets |
sample images |
tools/ |
maintainer-only ONNX export + quantization scripts |
CI (GitHub Actions) builds and runs the unit tests on Linux and Windows for every push and PR. See CHANGELOG.md for release history.
<br>
🤝 Contributing
Contributions are welcome! New features, accuracy improvements, performance tuning, bug fixes, additional language/model coverage, documentation, and tests are all appreciated.
- 🐛 Found a bug? Open an issue with a minimal repro (image/PDF + the code and options you used).
- 💡 Have an idea or feature request? Open an issue to discuss it first, then send a PR.
- 🔧 Sending a PR? Branch from
main, keep changes focused, and make suredotnet build -c Releaseand the unit tests (dotnet test --filter "Category!=Integration") pass.
If you're working on something larger, or want to collaborate on a feature, feel free to reach out before starting so we can align on the approach.
💖 Support
If EasyOcrSharp saves you time, consider supporting development:
- 💳 PayPal — paypal.me/FarhanLodi
- 📱 UPI (India) —
farhanlodi5@oksbi - 🏦 Bank transfer (USD) — details below
<details> <summary><b>USD bank transfer details (Wise)</b></summary>
<br>
USD account details for Farhan Lodi on Wise. Sending from a bank in the US? Use these details for a domestic transfer. Sending from anywhere else? Make an international SWIFT transfer.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Name | Farhan Lodi |
| Account type | Deposit |
| Routing number (wire and ACH) | 084009519 |
| Account number | 420927686563885 |
| SWIFT/BIC | TRWIUS35XXX |
| Bank address | Wise US Inc, 108 W 13th St, Wilmington, DE, 19801, United States |
Use the routing and account numbers when sending from the US, and the SWIFT/BIC when sending from outside the US.
</details>
📧 Need more details, a different payment method, or have a question? Email farhanlodi31@gmail.com.
📬 Contact
For work inquiries, collaboration, feature requests, or any questions, reach out to:
Farhan Lodi — farhanlodi31@gmail.com
📄 License
MIT — see LICENSE. The code has no copyleft or commercially-tiered dependency at any depth. The neural weights downloaded at runtime keep their own upstream licences — EasyOCR and PaddleOCR models are Apache-2.0, TrOCR is MIT — and are attributed in NOTICE.
🙏 Acknowledgments
- EasyOCR — the underlying CRAFT + CRNN models
- ONNX Runtime — neural network execution
- EasyImageSharp — image decoding, encoding and the processing pipeline
- PaddleOCR — the PP-StructureV3 models behind
AnalyzeDocumentAsync
<div align="center"> <br>
<sub>Built with ❤️ for the .NET community · EasyOCR accuracy, zero Python</sub>
</div>
| Product | Versions Compatible and additional computed target framework versions. |
|---|---|
| .NET | net10.0 is compatible. net10.0-android was computed. net10.0-browser was computed. net10.0-ios was computed. net10.0-maccatalyst was computed. net10.0-macos was computed. net10.0-tvos was computed. net10.0-windows was computed. |
This package has no dependencies.
3.1.0: Tracks EasyOcrSharp 3.1.0, which adds tagged OpenTelemetry metrics (recorded on failures too, not just successes), opt-in concurrency limiting and per-operation timeouts, a warm-up hosted service, and a health check that verifies OCR actually runs rather than only that model files exist. No command, flag, output format or exit code changed. 3.0.0: Tracks EasyOcrSharp 3.0.0. The imaging stack moves to EasyImageSharp and the PP-StructureV3 document-structure engine is now built into EasyOcrSharp rather than coming from the third-party PaddleOcrNet package, so no split-licensed dependency remains anywhere in the graph. Models are served from the EasyOcrSharp model repository and cached in one directory shared with the library (%LOCALAPPDATA%/EasyOcrSharp/models), so structure models re-download once after upgrading. No command, flag, output format or exit code changed.