Textract is powerful if you already live in AWS. If you just want a PDF's data back from one API call, this is the simpler path.
Amazon Textract is AWS's OCR and document-extraction service. It's strong on forms and tables and scales to huge volume, but using it means an AWS account, IAM roles, the SDK or S3 wiring, and per-page billing you have to model.
pdftojson is a hosted extraction API you call directly: one HTTP request with a bearer token returns structured data, no cloud account to set up. There's also a free in-browser converter for quick one-off jobs.
If your stack already lives in AWS, Textract fits neatly with S3, Lambda and the rest, and scales to very high volume.
Textract's form and table detection is mature and proven at scale across a lot of document types.
| pdftojson | Amazon Textract | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | One API call, bearer token | AWS account, IAM, SDK or S3 wiring |
| Free in-browser tool (nothing uploaded) | Yes — text PDFs parse locally | No |
| Output formats | JSON, Markdown, CSV, XML, Text | JSON blocks, forms, tables |
| Bank-statement reconciliation | Yes — checks the balance math | No |
| OCR for scanned PDFs | Yes | Yes |
| Pricing | Flat $29/mo | Per-page, via AWS billing |
| Best for | A simple hosted extraction API | Teams already deep in AWS |
The cost of Textract's power is setup. Before you extract a single page you're provisioning IAM, wiring the SDK or S3, and working out per-page pricing across regions. pdftojson is one authenticated POST that returns JSON, Markdown, CSV, XML or text, with a free browser tool for quick jobs and flat monthly pricing.
And for bank statements it adds a check Textract doesn't: it reconciles the transactions against the opening and closing balances and flags anything that doesn't tie out, so a dropped or misread row doesn't reach your books.
No. You call the API directly with a bearer token — there's no AWS account, IAM role or SDK to set up. There's also a free in-browser tool for text-based PDFs.
For most documents the extraction is comparable; Textract is very mature on forms and tables at scale. Where pdftojson is different is the reconciliation check on bank statements, which catches extraction mistakes Textract won't flag.
pdftojson is a flat $29/mo plan billed per page, with a free tier. Textract is per-page through AWS billing, which you model across regions and features.
Yes. Scanned PDFs are processed with OCR through the API; the free in-browser tool handles text-based PDFs.