# Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API vs Docling (slim)

> Docling scores 64.3 (B) to Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract's 55 (C) for document parsing. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
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Docling scores 64.3 (B) on agent readiness against Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API's 55 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API leads on transparency & trust. Both do document parsing.

- Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API: C 55, rank #882 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/adobe-pdf-extract.min.md
- Docling: B 64.3, rank #475 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/docling.min.md
- Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API, good for Teams already on Adobe that want PDF extraction and PDF manipulation on one credential, with EU processing. Ahead on Transparency & trust, 78 against 65. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install; Free to start without a card; No incidents deducted, where Docling loses 8 points for them.
- Docling, good for Self-hosted PDF and Office conversion to Markdown or JSON for RAG and agents that can't send documents out. Ahead on Reliability, 85 against 50; Agent ergonomics, 77 against 57; Payments & pricing, 60 against 20; Maintenance & community, 89 against 43. Also No key needed to call it; Runs on your own machine; Open source.

| Category | Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API | Docling |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 50 | 85 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 80 | 77 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 57 | 77 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 55 | 53 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 43 | 89 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 78 | 65 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API | Docling |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | SDK + MCP |
| Vendor | Adobe | Docling Project (LF AI & Data Foundation, started at IBM Research Zurich) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://pdf-services.adobe.io` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | stdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| Licence | none | MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 25 |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.docling-project/docling-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-08-10 | 2026-11-05 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-10-24 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Popularity | 165 stars, 82k npm/wk, 58k PyPI/wk | 70k stars, 947k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | none |

Why the edge:
- Maintenance & community, Docling +46: Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API 43 (Python SDK 4.3.0 and .NET SDK 4.4.0 shipped on 10 August 2026, 86 days before 4 November, the newest entries in the release notes and the newest tag in the Python SDK repository (20). Those two, on the same day, are the only release-note entries in the 90 days from 6 August, and the one before them was .NET SDK 4.3.1 on 29 September 2025. Fewer than three, so the line gives 0 (was 10, a value the line doesn't have). Public release notes and Adobe's developer forums, replies not sampled (10 of 15). Python and .NET SDKs are current, the Java samples still pin 4.3.0 from April 2025 and the Node.js samples 4.1.0 from November 2024 (10 of 15). The Python SDK repository has a publish workflow and no test workflow (3 of 10). 20+0+10+10+3 = 43.); Docling 89 (v2.148.0 on 5 November 2026, the day before this check (30). 13 releases from 9 October to 5 November (20). Open issues and pull requests are numerous, an AI triage workflow and PR reminders run, and six maintainers are named; replies not sampled (17 of 25). docling-mcp publishes to the official MCP registry on release under io.github.docling-project, per its workflow and server.json; the registry entry itself was not read (12 of 15). CI, a dependency-update workflow and uv.lock (10). 30+20+17+12+10 = 89.)
- Payments & pricing, Docling +40: Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API 20 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). The pricing page publishes the free tier and the transaction rules (1 transaction per 5 pages for Extract) but no paid price, which goes through sales (0). 500 Document Transactions a month free with no card (20). A person signs up for an Adobe account in a browser (0).); Docling 60 (Self-hosted rule. Free MIT software with nothing to buy, so 20 + 20 + 20, and no payment protocol (0). 60.)
- Reliability, Docling +35: Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API 50 (The docs point to a PDF Services product page at status.adobe.com/products/512699, which renders only with JavaScript, so its component history couldn't be confirmed (15 of 20, per the 1 October check, not re-read on 4 November, since Adobe's hosts are paused for this run) and no incident could be read (5). Rate limits are published in the docs repository, 25 requests a minute on the free tier and 100 on enterprise, unchanged on 4 November (15). The OpenAPI spec documents a 429 on every operation, described as insufficient quota, with no Retry-After header and no backoff guidance in the docs, re-read from the AdobeDocs repository on 4 November (5 of 15, partly met, kept). No SLA found (0). Extract and PDF to Markdown aren't labelled beta (10). 15+5+15+5+0+10 = 50.); Docling 85 (Local-software lines, graded on the library with docling-serve and docling-mcp. Installs from PyPI (`docling` 2.148.0, per the PyPI release feed) for Python 3.10 and later on macOS, Linux and Windows (20). Public CI workflows for checks, tests and heavy examples; the pass state of the default branch was not read (20 of 25). About 719 open issues and 223 open pull requests on the repository page against 13 releases in four weeks, many of them fixes; replies not sampled (15 of 25). Semantic-release changelog with Feature and Fix sections and Breaking sections where they apply (15). Version 2.x since 2024 (15). 20+20+15+15+15 = 85.)
- Agent ergonomics, Docling +20: Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API 57 (Extract lets you pick text, tables or both, CSV or XLSX tables and optional figure renditions, and PDF to Markdown returns one Markdown file, but there's no page-range option on Extract (15 of 25). Output-size controls are the element and rendition switches above, with no pagination of results (10 of 20). The Extract error codes are specific enough to act on, such as DISQUALIFIED_PERMISSIONS for copy-protected files (16 of 20). No idempotency key. Requests echo an x-request-id, and webhooks replace polling (6 of 20). Official SDKs in Java, .NET, Node.js and Python, but every job is a token call, an asset upload, an operation and a poll (10 of 15).); Docling 77 (About 25 MCP tools in the default groups (15), selectable as conversion, generation and manipulation groups, with anchor tools to read one part of a document (22 of 25). `max_num_pages`, `max_file_size` and page ranges on conversion, Markdown or JSON export (15 of 20). Errors are exceptions with messages, such as an unknown document key listing the valid ones (12 of 20). readOnlyHint and destructiveHint on the MCP tools, and conversions are repeatable (18 of 20). Sensible defaults and one call to convert; Python only, with a docling-client package for docling-serve (10 of 15). 22+15+12+18+10 = 77.)
- Transparency & trust, Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API +13: Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API 78 (Closed service under Adobe's terms, and the SDKs ship under Adobe's own licence agreement rather than an OSI licence (15). The PDF Services security page says uploads and outputs stay in Document Cloud for 24 hours by default, can be deleted at once with DELETE /assets, and can bypass Adobe storage through signed URLs. We didn't read a DPA (20 of 30, the security page re-read from the docs repository on 4 November). The SDK versioning policy says a major release starts an end-of-life clock for the previous one, and past notices are dated, such as JWT credentials deprecated in 2023 (15 of 20). Processing on AWS in US-East or EMEA, chosen by the customer, and no subprocessor list checked (10 of 20).); Docling 65 (MIT, an OSI licence, with model licences noted as separate (30). Runs locally, remote services off by default and air-gapped use documented; no privacy statement is needed for local use, but model downloads from Hugging Face on first run are only partly described (22 of 30). Breaking changes are marked in the changelog, with no deprecation policy or dated notices (10 of 20). No telemetry found in the source; nothing to opt out of (15 of 20). 30+22+10+15 = 77.)