PDFjet vs AWS Textract
Textract has deep table and form OCR inside AWS. PDFjet gives you Markdown, CSV and RAG-ready output in one call — no S3 pipeline, nothing stored.
AWS Textract is a powerful OCR/IDP engine: rich table structure (merged cells, headers, table types), form key-value pairs, bounding boxes on every block, and prebuilt models for invoices, receipts and IDs. If you're deep in AWS and want raw extraction primitives, it's excellent.
PDFjet targets the same PDFs with a very different shape: a single hosted call that returns clean Markdown, CSV, JSON, editable Word or a searchable PDF — plus heading-aware RAG chunks — with simple per-page pricing, an MCP server, and zero data retention. No S3 buckets, SNS/SQS, or block-tree parsing to wire up.
AWS Textract vs PDFjet, feature by feature
| Capability | PDFjet | AWS Textract |
|---|---|---|
| PDF → CSV (tables) | ||
| PDF → Markdown (RAG-ready) | ||
| PDF → structured JSON | ||
| PDF → editable Word (.docx) | ||
| OCR of scans / searchable PDF | Partial | |
| AI / vision-model extraction | ||
| RAG chunking (heading-aware) | ||
| Per-element bbox provenance | ||
| Schema-guided / prebuilt field extraction | ||
| Convert files → PDF | ||
| Merge / split / encrypt | ||
| Files never stored | Partial |
Comparison reflects each vendor's public documentation as of July 2026. Capabilities change — check the source links below before relying on a specific detail.
When AWS Textract may fit better
- •You're already on AWS and want extraction that fits IAM, S3 and the rest of your stack.
- •You need the deepest table/form semantics (merged cells, table-type classification) and prebuilt invoice/receipt/ID models.
- •You want to train custom Adapters and Textract explicitly doesn't retain that training data.
When PDFjet is the better call
- •You want Markdown, CSV, editable Word or a searchable PDF directly — Textract returns verbose block-based JSON you must reassemble.
- •You're building RAG and want heading-aware chunks — Textract has no chunking or Markdown.
- •You don't want to stand up S3 + SNS/SQS for async multi-page PDFs — PDFjet is one synchronous call.
- •You prefer simple per-page pricing (Textract spreads cost across five APIs) and zero data retention, plus convert/merge/split and an MCP server.
Try PDFjet in one call
Point your PDF at one endpoint and pick the output — CSV, Markdown, JSON, editable Word, or a searchable PDF. No SDK required.
curl -X POST https://pdfjet.dev/extract/md \
-H "Authorization: Bearer pj_live_..." \
-F [email protected]FAQ
Is PDFjet a good alternative to AWS Textract?
Yes if you want clean Markdown, CSV or RAG-ready chunks in one call without building an AWS pipeline, and prefer simple per-page pricing with zero retention. Textract is the better fit when you're committed to AWS and need its deep table/form semantics and prebuilt models.
What does PDFjet do that AWS Textract doesn't?
Direct CSV, Markdown, editable Word and searchable-PDF output, heading-aware RAG chunking, file-to-PDF conversion, merge/split/encrypt, an MCP server, and zero data retention. Textract returns block-based JSON only and has no Markdown or chunking.
Does AWS Textract store my documents?
Synchronous calls return results without storing them; asynchronous multi-page jobs read from and write to your own S3, so retention is under your control. Custom-adapter training data is deleted after training. PDFjet processes in memory and stores nothing.
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Sources: aws.amazon.com/textract/pricing/·docs.aws.amazon.com/textract/latest/dg/data-protection.html·docs.aws.amazon.com/textract/latest/dg/how-it-works-tables.html