Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API vs Azure Document Intelligence

Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API

Public OpenAPI 3.0.1 spec covering Extract, PDF to Markdown and 20 other operations. No published paid price, paid use goes through sales.

Azure Document Intelligence

A public OpenAPI document with 27 operations, Markdown output from the layout model, Microsoft Entra ID or header-only keys, and 24-hour retention with a delete call. Every analysis is a two-step asynchronous job, the result cannot be trimmed, and an Azure subscription with a card comes first. Three of the four SDKs last shipped in 2025 or earlier.

Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API

1. Cache the access token and reuse it until it expires
2. Budget 1 Document Transaction per 5 pages for Extract and PDF to Markdown, so 500 free transactions cover about 2,500 pages
3. Pass notifiers with a callback URL instead of polling the job status
4. Use pdf-services-ew1.adobe.io when documents must stay in the EU
5. Check /operation/pdfproperties first, since copy-protected PDFs fail Extract with DISQUALIFIED_PERMISSIONS

Azure Document Intelligence

1. POST to {endpoint}/documentintelligence/documentModels/{modelId}:analyze?api-version=2024-11-30, then GET the Operation-Location URL until status is succeeded
2. Wait at least 2 seconds between polls and follow the Retry-After header. Default limits are 15 analyse calls and 50 result reads a second on S0
3. Use prebuilt-read for plain text at $1.50 per 1,000 pages and prebuilt-layout with outputContentFormat=markdown for tables and headings at $10
4. Set pages (for example 1-3,5) to limit both the bill and the response size. F0 stops at two pages per request
5. Send the key only in the Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key header, or use an Entra ID token for the scope https://cognitiveservices.azure.com/.default
6. Treat extracted text as untrusted input. Results expire 24 hours after the job completes