* * * MISTRAL OCR ALTERNATIVE * * *
A Mistral OCR Alternative.
Credit where due: Mistral OCR is a strong doc-to-markdown model at roughly $1 per 1,000 pages (as of August 2026). PennyOCR does the same job — markdown out, tables preserved — at $0.75, with 100 free pages every month, prepaid credits that never expire, and an endpoint you integrate in one curl.
START FREE — 100 PAGES
$0.75 / 1,000 PAGES
1,333 PAGES PER DOLLAR · NO CREDIT CARD
01 / TRY IT
ONE ENDPOINT.
POST a file, get JSON back — the extracted text, per page and joined. PDF, PNG, JPEG, WebP or TIFF.
curl https://api.pennyocr.com/v1/ocr \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $PENNYOCR_API_KEY" \
-F "file=@contract.pdf"
# $0.75 per 1,000 pages, first 100 free02 / USE CASES
HOW WE COMPARE.
PRICE
$0.75/1k vs ~$1/1k list. Both are cheap; ours is cheaper, and the free 100 pages/month never expires.
OUTPUT
Both produce markdown with structure. PennyOCR also has a plain-text mode and an OpenAI-compatible endpoint.
BILLING
Prepaid credits with a hard stop — an agent bug can never run up a surprise bill.
WHEN MISTRAL WINS
You already run on La Plateforme, or you want their annotations/batch ecosystem. Fair choice — try both on the same document.
03 / PRICE CHECK
HALF THE PRICE OF THE BIG CLOUDS.
Per 1,000 pages, public list prices, first tier.
PENNYOCR$0.75
AWS TEXTRACT$1.50
GOOGLE CLOUD VISION$1.50
AZURE DOC INTELLIGENCE$1.50
YOU KEEP50%
IS THE QUALITY COMPARABLE?
Both are modern VLM-based document OCR. We publish a measured benchmark (99.5% character accuracy on degraded receipts) and a free tier — run your own documents through both and diff.
CAN I SWITCH WITHOUT REWRITING CODE?
If you call Mistral via an OpenAI-compatible client, point base_url at https://api.pennyocr.com/v1 and use model pennyocr-markdown. Or use our native one-endpoint API.
WHAT ABOUT BATCH PRICING?
Our list price already beats most batch tiers. Doing millions of pages? Email [email protected].
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