Pick MinerU if
research and RAG teams who will run the repo or stay on hosted Free/Pro.
Read the MinerU pageMinerU vs PaddleOCR
Our take
Pick MinerU if you're on a research and RAG team who will run the repo or stay on hosted Free/Pro. Pick PaddleOCR if you're an engineer who will run Apache PaddleOCR or poke the Space. Skip MinerU if you're on a aP team who need invoice key-values (Parseur). Skip PaddleOCR if you're on a team that need a public $/1k SLA (Mistral OCR) without a GPU.
Best for
MinerU Papers and chem drawings → RAG-ready files
PaddleOCR Local or demo OCR you can self-host
Free plan
MinerU $0 · under the project license. Separate commercial terms above 100M MAU or $20M monthly revenue; online services must attribute MinerU
PaddleOCR $0 · apache-2.0. You pay hardware
Lowest paid
MinerU Pro · Monthly $9.90/mo
PaddleOCR Not published by the vendor
Next step up
MinerU Pro · Annual $59.90/mo
PaddleOCR
Runs where
MinerU Hosted
PaddleOCR Local or hosted
Watch out
MinerU Free has no API
PaddleOCR The Space can be slow
Last checked
MinerU 2026-10-28 · mineru.io
PaddleOCR 2026-10-28 · github.com/PaddlePaddle/PaddleOCR
Which one, then?
Pick PaddleOCR if
engineers who will run Apache PaddleOCR or poke the Space.
Read the PaddleOCR page