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Text Recognition

With ML Kit's text recognition APIs, you can recognize text in any Latin-based language (and more, with Cloud-based text recognition).

Text recognition can automate tedious data entry for credit cards, receipts, and business cards. With the Cloud-based API, you can also extract text from pictures of documents, which you can use to increase accessibility or translate documents. Apps can even keep track of real-world objects, such as by reading the numbers on trains.

iOS Android

If you're a Flutter developer, you might be interested in FlutterFire, which includes a plugin for Firebase's ML Vision APIs.

Choose between on-device and Cloud APIs

	On-device	Cloud
Pricing	Free	Free for first 1000 uses of this feature per month: see Pricing
Ideal use cases	Real-time processing—ideal for a camera or video feed Recognizing sparse text in images	High-accuracy text recognition Recognizing sparse text in images Recognizing densely-spaced text in pictures of documents See the Cloud Vision API demo.
Language support	Recognizes Latin characters	Recognizes and identifies a broad range of languages and special characters

Example results

Sparse text

Photo: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / "Düsseldorf, Wege der parlamentarischen Demokratie -- 2015 -- 8123" / CC BY-SA 4.0

Recognized Text
Text	`Wege der parlamentarischen Demokratie`
Blocks	(1 block)

Block 0
Text	`Wege der parlamentarischen Demokratie`
Frame	(117.0, 258.0, 190.0, 83.0)
Corner Points	(117, 270), (301.64, 258.49), (306.05, 329.36), (121.41, 340.86)
Recognized Language Code	de
Lines	(3 lines)

Line 0
Text	`Wege der`
Frame	(167.0, 261.0, 91.0, 28.0)
Corner Points	(167, 267), (255.82, 261.46), (257.19, 283.42), (168.36, 288.95)
Recognized Language Code	de
Elements	(2 elements)

Element 0
Text	`Wege`
Frame	(167.0, 263.0, 59.0, 26.0)
Corner Points	(167, 267), (223.88, 263.45), (225.25, 285.41), (168.36, 288.95)

Document text

Recognized Text

Text

DR. SEWARD'S DIARY 361
 Professor. He had evidently expected some such call, for
 I found him dressed in his room. His door was ajar, so that
 he could hear the opening of the door of our room. He
 came at once; as he passed into the room, he asked Mina
 if the others might come, too.
 "No," she said quite simply, "it will not be necessary.
 You can tell them just as well. I must go with you on your
 journey."
 Dr. Van Helsing was as startled as I was. After a mo-
 ment's pause he asked:
 "But why?"

...

(full text)

Blocks (1 block)

Block 0
Text	`DR . SEWARD ' S DIARY 361 Professor . He had evidently expected some such call , for I found him dressed in his room . His door was ajar , so that he could hear the opening of the door of our room . He came at once ; as he passed into the room , he asked Mina if the others might come , too .` `" No , " she said quite simply , " it will not be necessary . You can tell them just as well . I must go with you on your journey . "` `Dr . Van Helsing was as startled as I was . After a mo ment ' s pause he asked :` ... (full text)
Confidence	0.98
Frame	(25.0, 21.0, 359.0, 583.0)
Recognized Language Code	en
Paragraphs	(10 paragraphs)

Paragraph 1
Text	`" No , " she said quite simply , " it will not be necessary . You can tell them just as well . I must go with you on your journey . "`
Confidence	0.98
Frame	(29.0, 110.0, 355.0, 44.0)
Recognized Language Code	en
Words	(34 words)

Word 7
Text	`simply`
Confidence	0.99
Frame	(179.0, 110.0, 37.0, 15.0)
Recognized Language Code	en
Symbols	(6 symbols)

Symbol 0
Text	`s`
Confidence	1.00
Frame	(179.0, 110.0, 3.0, 15.0)
Recognized Language Code	en