Pick PaddleOCR if
engineers who will run Apache PaddleOCR or poke the Space.
Read the PaddleOCR pagePaddleOCR vs Surya
Our take
Pick PaddleOCR if you're an engineer who will run Apache PaddleOCR or poke the Space. Pick Surya if you're an engineer who will run Surya locally or pay Datalab Convert. Skip PaddleOCR if you're on a team that need a public $/1k SLA (Mistral OCR) without a GPU. Skip Surya if you're on a ops team who want a mailbox (Parseur).
Best for
PaddleOCR Local or demo OCR you can self-host
Surya Boxes around text/tables on a page
Free plan
PaddleOCR $0 · apache-2.0. You pay hardware
Surya $0 · weights: free for research/personal; commercial free under Datalab’s $5M Marker/Surya threshold — confirm LICENSE
Lowest paid
PaddleOCR Not published by the vendor
Surya Convert — lite $0.50
Next step up
PaddleOCR
Surya Convert — fast / balanced $4
Runs where
PaddleOCR Local or hosted
Surya Hosted
Watch out
PaddleOCR The Space can be slow
Surya Weights are not a blanket commercial Apache grant
Last checked
PaddleOCR 2026-10-28 · github.com/PaddlePaddle/PaddleOCR
Surya 2026-10-28 · datalab.to/pricing
Which one, then?
Pick Surya if
engineers who will run Surya locally or pay Datalab Convert.
Read the Surya page