OpenDataLoader PDF

PDF Parser for AI-ready data. Automate PDF accessibility. Open-source.

🔍 PDF parser for AI data extraction — Extract Markdown, JSON (with bounding boxes), and HTML from any PDF. #1 in benchmarks (0.907 overall). Deterministic local mode + AI hybrid mode for complex pages.

• How accurate is it? — #1 in benchmarks: 0.907 overall, 0.928 table accuracy across 200 real-world PDFs including multi-column and scientific papers. Deterministic local mode + AI hybrid mode for complex pages (benchmarks)
• Scanned PDFs and OCR? — Yes. Built-in OCR (80+ languages) in hybrid mode. Works with poor-quality scans at 300 DPI+ (hybrid mode)
• Tables, formulas, images, charts? — Yes. Complex/borderless tables, LaTeX formulas, and AI-generated picture/chart descriptions all via hybrid mode (hybrid mode)
• How do I use this for RAG? — pip install opendataloader-pdf, convert in 3 lines. Outputs structured Markdown for chunking, JSON with bounding boxes for source citations, and HTML. LangChain integration available. Python, Node.js, Java SDKs (quick start | LangChain)

♿ PDF accessibility automation — Auto-tag untagged PDFs into screen-reader-ready Tagged PDFs at scale. First open-source tool to generate Tagged PDFs end-to-end.

• What's the problem? — Accessibility regulations are now enforced worldwide. Manual PDF remediation costs $50–200 per document and doesn't scale (regulations)
• What's free? — Layout analysis + auto-tagging (Apache 2.0). Untagged PDF in → Tagged PDF out. No proprietary SDK dependency (auto-tagging)
• What about PDF/UA compliance? — Converting Tagged PDF to PDF/UA-1 or PDF/UA-2 is an enterprise add-on. Auto-tagging generates the Tagged PDF; PDF/UA export is the final step (pipeline)
• Why trust this? — Built in collaboration with Dual Lab (veraPDF developers) based on PDF Association specifications, best practice guides and expertise of the PDF Community. Auto-tagging follows the Well-Tagged PDF specification, validated with veraPDF (collaboration)

Get Started in 30 Seconds

Requires: Java 11+ and Python 3.10+ (Node.js | Java also available)

Before you start: run java -version. If not found, install JDK 11+ from Adoptium.

pip install -U opendataloader-pdf

import opendataloader_pdf

# Batch all files in one call — each convert() spawns a JVM process, so repeated calls are slow
opendataloader_pdf.convert(
    input_path=["file1.pdf", "file2.pdf", "folder/"],
    output_dir="output/",
    format="markdown,json"
)

Annotated PDF output — each element (heading, paragraph, table, image) detected with bounding boxes and semantic type.

What Problems Does This Solve?

Capability Matrix

Extraction Benchmarks

opendataloader-pdf [hybrid] ranks #1 overall (0.907) across reading order, table, and heading extraction accuracy.

Scores normalized to [0, 1]. Higher is better for accuracy; lower is better for speed. Bold = best. Full benchmark details

Which Mode Should I Use?

Quick Start

Python

pip install -U opendataloader-pdf

import opendataloader_pdf

# Batch all files in one call — each convert() spawns a JVM process, so repeated calls are slow
opendataloader_pdf.convert(
    input_path=["file1.pdf", "file2.pdf", "folder/"],
    output_dir="output/",
    format="markdown,json"
)

Node.js

npm install @opendataloader/pdf

import { convert } from '@opendataloader/pdf';

await convert(['file1.pdf', 'file2.pdf', 'folder/'], {
  outputDir: 'output/',
  format: 'markdown,json'
});

Java

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.opendataloader</groupId>
  <artifactId>opendataloader-pdf-core</artifactId>
</dependency>

Python Quick Start | Node.js Quick Start | Java Quick Start

Hybrid Mode: #1 Accuracy for Complex PDFs

Hybrid mode combines fast local Java processing with AI backends. Simple pages stay local (0.02s); complex pages route to AI for +90% table accuracy.

pip install -U "opendataloader-pdf[hybrid]"

Terminal 1 — Start the backend server:

opendataloader-pdf-hybrid --port 5002

Terminal 2 — Process PDFs:

# Batch all files in one call — each invocation spawns a JVM process, so repeated calls are slow
opendataloader-pdf --hybrid docling-fast file1.pdf file2.pdf folder/

Python:

# Batch all files in one call — each convert() spawns a JVM process, so repeated calls are slow
opendataloader_pdf.convert(
    input_path=["file1.pdf", "file2.pdf", "folder/"],
    output_dir="output/",
    hybrid="docling-fast"
)

OCR for Scanned PDFs

Start the backend with --force-ocr for image-based PDFs with no selectable text:

opendataloader-pdf-hybrid --port 5002 --force-ocr

For non-English documents, specify the language:

opendataloader-pdf-hybrid --port 5002 --force-ocr --ocr-lang "ko,en"

Supported languages: en, ko, ja, ch_sim, ch_tra, de, fr, ar, and more.

Formula Extraction (LaTeX)

Extract mathematical formulas as LaTeX from scientific PDFs:

# Server: enable formula enrichment
opendataloader-pdf-hybrid --enrich-formula

# Batch all files in one call — each invocation spawns a JVM process, so repeated calls are slow
opendataloader-pdf --hybrid docling-fast --hybrid-mode full file1.pdf file2.pdf folder/

Output in JSON:

{
  "type": "formula",
  "page number": 1,
  "bounding box": [226.2, 144.7, 377.1, 168.7],
  "content": "\\frac{f(x+h) - f(x)}{h}"
}

Note: Formula and picture description enrichments require --hybrid-mode full on the client side.

Chart & Image Description

Generate AI descriptions for charts and images — useful for RAG search and accessibility alt text:

```bash

Server

opendataloader-pdf-hybrid --enrich-picture-description

Batch all files in one call — each invocation spawns a JVM process, so repeated calls ar