Layout-aware OCR & form extraction

Scores as of 2026-09-14 (43 days old; Depot marks scores stale after 30 days). The pick is still Depot's current editorial pick; it has not been re-reviewed since. Prices below carry their own dates.

Depot Pick

Reducto · 8.11/10 for this job (curated estimate, high confidence)

Distinct from `document-parse` (general LLM-ready chunks). Weight capability on layout fidelity. Confidence: medium-high on Reducto agentic OCR positioning.

Runner-up

LlamaParse · 8.24/10

Scores higher than the pick on: Price / performance, Latency / reliability, Developer & agent DX, Maturity / track record.

When not to use the pick

Simple markdown chunking is enough (LlamaParse), or you need broad ETL connectors (Unstructured).

Lock-in / migration

The pick has lower stored lock-in risk than runner-up LlamaParse (4.5 vs 4.8). Self-host fallback listed for this job: Florence-2-base, PaddleOCR, EasyOCR.

Sourced price (usd_per_1k_pages)

Pick's lowest sourced SKU: r-1 Parse API $10 (usd_per_1k_pages) — source, as of 2026-10-19

Cheapest matching SKU: Reducto r-1 Parse API $10 — source, as of 2026-10-19. The pick is the cheapest.

Price history: first seen 2026-10-19 · last changed no change recorded · history JSON

Free option

• Docling (oss) — source, as of 2026-10-25
• EasyOCR (oss) — source, as of 2026-10-25
• Florence-2-base (oss) — source, as of 2026-10-25

Failure modes to watch

• Collateral side effects: Snapshot the workspace or app state, then diff it against an allowlist. A passing check plus an unexpected diff is a failure.
• Hallucinated tool arguments: Reject a call that fails the current schema or names an unknown id, and do that before the tool runs a side effect.
• Partial tool success: Require a per-item status and a failure count. Success for the task requires the failed count to be zero or explicitly handed to a retry queue.
• Schema drift: Validate every tool call and every loaded table against the current schema. Quarantine mismatches instead of coercing them.
• Silent truncation: Tools must return whether the payload was truncated and how long the original was. Fail the task if the answer depends on the missing span.
• Stale retrieval: Store the source URL and the time it was fetched. If a newer canonical page exists, or two stored sources disagree, do not answer from the older one.

Reported outcomes (submitted reports only)

This job: loading… JSON · reports never change scores · seed/test records excluded

Depot Pick (Reducto) on this job: loading… JSON · reports never change scores · seed/test records excluded

Cite: Agent Provider Depot, Depot Pick for layout-aware-ocr: reducto, scores as of 2026-09-14. Agents: GET /api/decide?jtbd=layout-aware-ocr