MinerU extracts text, tables, formulas and images from PDFs into Markdown or JSON, handling scientific documents particularly well.
| Category | Document AI & OCR |
| Type | Document extractor |
| License | AGPL-3.0 |
| Runs locally | Yes |
| Built with | Python |
| Skill level | Intermediate |
| Best for | scientific PDFs with formulas |
Other open-source document ai & ocr tools worth comparing:
MarkerConvert PDFs to clean Markdown fast
DoclingIBM-grade document understanding
SuryaModern OCR with layout detection
PaddleOCRIndustrial OCR with tiny models
UnstructuredTurn any file into LLM-ready data
FirecrawlTurn websites into LLM-ready Markdown
Crawl4AIOpen-source LLM-friendly crawler
olmOCRTurn PDFs into clean training-grade text
TesseractThe classic OCR engineMinerU is free and open-source (AGPL-3.0 license), so you can use, self-host and modify it at no cost.
Yes. MinerU is designed to run on your own machine or server, keeping your data private.
Popular open-source alternatives include Marker, Docling, Surya. See the comparisons above to choose.
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