# Amazon Textract vs Docling

> Amazon Textract scores 73.7 (BB) to Docling's 64.3 (B) for document parsing. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-docling
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-docling.md (~5,600 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Amazon Textract scores 73.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Docling's 64.3 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Docling leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do document parsing.

- Amazon Textract: grade BB, 73.7/100, rank #99 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/amazon-textract.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/amazon-textract.json
- Docling: grade B, 64.3/100, rank #477 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/docling.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/docling.json
- Best document parsing, OCR and extraction APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/document-extraction/index.md
- All 182 documents comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/document-extraction/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Amazon Textract (BB)

Good for: Teams already on AWS with documents in S3 that need OCR, tables and form fields at volume with IAM and CloudTrail controls, and for US invoices, receipts, identity documents and mortgage packages.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 96 against 85
- Schema & documentation, 82 against 77
- Security & auth, 74 against 53
- Transparency & trust, 85 against 65

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- No incidents deducted, where Docling loses 8 points for them

Watch for: AWS may store and use processed documents to improve the service, in other Regions too, unless an AI services opt-out policy is set on the AWS organisation

### Docling (B)

Good for: Self-hosted PDF and Office conversion to Markdown or JSON for RAG and agents that can't send documents out.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 77 against 70
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 35
- Maintenance & community, 89 against 58

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source

Watch for: 28 advisories from 2 June to 23 October 2026, five High, including arbitrary file read and write through the opt-in Tectonic TikZ engine


## Why the edge

### Maintenance & community: Docling +31

- Amazon Textract (58): The Textract API model last changed on 11 August 2026, a documentation update, 82 days before the re-check, and the JavaScript SDK client shipped 3.1161.0 on 30 October (20 of 30). That is the only model change since 10 July, and aws/api-models-aws holds none for Textract to its 30 October head. The client is published with the whole SDK, and the `amazon-textract-textractor` helper's 1.10.0 (11 August) is a helper release that doesn't change the service. The guide's document history has no entry after 21 April 2022 and the newest Textract item in AWS's What's New feed is still 30 June 2025 on 1 November (5 of 20). The 11 August model change leaves the 90-day window on 9 November. Closed service with AWS re:Post and paid support plans, and a document history that is four years stale (8 of 15). Official SDKs released on most working days (15). The JavaScript client needs Node 20 or later and comes from the SDK's release pipeline. The `amazon-textract-textractor` helper library released 1.10.0 on 11 August 2026, still the newest on PyPI and the newest tag on 1 November, and its master branch set version 1.10.1 on 23 October without a tag (10).
- 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 +25

- Amazon Textract (35): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-page prices by Region published without login, with a price feed the pricing page loads, republished on 27 October 2026 with the same US East (N. Virginia) page prices (20). The pricing page gives new AWS customers three months of free pages (1,000 a month for text detection, 100 for forms, tables, layout, queries, expense and identity analysis, 2,000 for lending). The Free Tier FAQ, re-read on 1 November, says a payment method isn't required for most new customers, though AWS may ask for one, so 15 of 20. A person signs up for the AWS account. IAM can mint keys by API only after that (0).
- Docling (60): Self-hosted rule. Free MIT software with nothing to buy, so 20 + 20 + 20, and no payment protocol (0). 60.

### Security & auth: Amazon Textract +21

- Amazon Textract (74): IAM with identity policies per action, temporary credentials from AWS STS and rotation. Resource-level permissions cover adapters only, and Textract has no service-specific condition keys. No secret travels in a URL (30). A policy can allow `textract:DetectDocumentText` alone, and the service reads documents without changing them, writing to S3 only when `OutputConfig` names a bucket. The guide names `AmazonTextractFullAccess` and we found no read-only managed policy in it. The only destructive calls delete adapters (16 of 20). Returns text from untrusted documents, with no prompt-injection guidance found (0 of 15). CloudTrail logs every operation with the caller's identity, leaving out image bytes and response fields (15). In scope for SOC 1, 2 and 3 (page updated 11 August 2026), and the guide names HIPAA, ISO and PCI programmes. Vulnerability disclosure programme on HackerOne. aws.amazon.com's security.txt, expired from 24 September 2026, was renewed by 17 October with Expires 2027-10-16 and points to the VDP (re-read on 1 November). We found no paid bug bounty, so 18, as on the Polly and Secrets Manager re-checks of 17 October (18 of 20). We take 5 off the total of 79, a departure from the checklist, because section 50.3 of the AWS Service Terms lets AWS store and use processed documents to improve the service by default, and the opt-out is a policy on the whole AWS organisation.
- Docling (53): Framework reading. No credentials for local use; docling-serve has one optional shared key, off by default (20 of 30). Remote services are off unless explicitly enabled, local file fetch is guarded by flags, and MCP tools carry read-only and destructive annotations; manipulation tools can delete items and save files (12 of 20). Converted documents are untrusted text and no prompt-injection guidance was found (3 of 15). Logging only, no audit trail (3 of 15). A disclosure policy with private reporting, 28 advisories published in public with fixed versions, under the LF AI & Data Foundation; no bug bounty (15 of 20). 20+12+3+3+15 = 53. The advisories themselves are the deduction.

### Transparency & trust: Amazon Textract +20

- Amazon Textract (85): Closed service under the AWS Customer Agreement and section 50 of the Service Terms, with Apache-2.0 SDKs (20 of 30). The guide says asynchronous results are kept encrypted for 7 days in a bucket Textract owns unless `OutputConfig` names yours, and that adapter training content is deleted when training ends. Section 50.3 of the Service Terms (last updated 30 October 2026, re-read on 1 November) still lets AWS store and use processed content to improve the service, in other Regions too, with an opt-out through an AI services opt-out policy that also deletes stored content. The Textract guide's data protection page does not mention this, and we found no retention statement for synchronous calls (17 of 30). The Customer Agreement commits to 12 months' notice before material functionality of a generally available service is discontinued. No dated Textract deprecation notices found (15 of 20). The sub-processor page, last updated 30 October 2026 and re-read on 1 November, lists Textract under service improvement with processing in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the USA, and promises 30 days' notice of new sub-processors. Region is chosen per request across 16 Regions (17 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.

### Reliability: Amazon Textract +11

- Amazon Textract (96): AWS Health Dashboard with per-service, per-Region history (20). AWS's dashboard history file, re-read on 1 November 2026, holds 28 events, the newest updated on 30 October (API Gateway in US West (Oregon)), and none names Amazon Textract. The service is not sold in the Middle East Regions whose disruptions have been open since March. The one event that names it is the US East (N. Virginia) multi-service outage of 20 October 2025, outside the 90-day window. The public dashboard shows broad events only (30). Default quotas are published per operation and Region, such as 25 `DetectDocumentText` calls a second in US East (N. Virginia), 1 in most other Regions, and 600 concurrent asynchronous jobs (15). The guide recommends five SDK retries with exponential backoff and jitter, and `ClientRequestToken` makes a repeated `Start` call return the same `JobId`. Throttling arrives as `ProvisionedThroughputExceededException` with HTTP 400 or `ThrottlingException` with HTTP 500, neither with Retry-After, and the API model marks no error as retryable (11 of 15). The Amazon Textract SLA, last updated 5 May 2022, commits 99.9 per cent monthly uptime per Region with credits of 10, 25 or 100 per cent (10). Generally available since 29 May 2019 (10).
- 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 +7

- Amazon Textract (70): Graded on the Textract API through the AWS CLI and SDKs. `FeatureTypes` selects what a call analyses, and queries return a named answer per question. The response is a flat list of blocks for every page, line and word, each with geometry and a confidence value, with no field selection, no way to omit word blocks and no Markdown or text output (12 of 25). `Get` operations page with `MaxResults` (1,000 blocks at most) and `NextToken`, and the two adapter list operations page and filter. No operation lists jobs and no block filter exists (13 of 20). 18 typed errors with HTTP codes and a recovery hint each, though throttling uses 400 and 500, not 429 (16 of 20). `ClientRequestToken` on the `Start` operations and on adapter creation, with `IdempotentParameterMismatchException` when a token is reused with different input. Synchronous calls change nothing but bill each attempt (18 of 20). `DetectDocumentText` needs only `Document`, and SDKs exist in every major language. Any PDF or TIFF of more than one page needs S3, an asynchronous job and polling or an SNS topic, and every call needs SigV4 (11 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.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Amazon Textract | Docling | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 96 | 85 | Amazon Textract +11 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 82 | 77 | Amazon Textract +5 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 70 | 77 | Docling +7 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 74 | 53 | Amazon Textract +21 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 35 | 60 | Docling +25 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 58 | 89 | Docling +31 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 65 | Amazon Textract +20 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -8 | |
| **Total** | | **73.7 · BB** | **64.3 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Amazon Textract | Docling |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | SDK + MCP |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | Docling Project (LF AI & Data Foundation, started at IBM Research Zurich) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://textract.us-east-1.amazonaws.com` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | stdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTP |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the AWS Customer Agreement. The AWS SDKs and the Textractor helper library are Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 25 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.docling-project/docling-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-30 | 2026-11-05 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-14 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-18 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not read yet |
| Popularity | 1.9M npm/wk, 208k PyPI/wk | 70k stars, 947k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | none |

## How the scores have moved

### Amazon Textract

- +0.2 on 17 October 2026: security

### Docling

No score change since it was listed.

## Verdicts

**Amazon Textract.** IAM policies limit a credential to single operations, CloudTrail logs every call, and page prices start at $1.50 per 1,000 in US East. Multipage files need S3 and an asynchronous job. Text detection covers six languages. Under the AWS Service Terms AWS may store and use documents to improve the service unless an AI services opt-out policy is set.

**Docling.** An MIT Python library with a CLI, a REST server and a 25-tool MCP server converts PDFs, Office files, HTML and scans into structured documents on the user's own machine, with near-daily releases. Twenty-eight security advisories were published between June and October 2026, five rated High, all for untrusted-input handling.

## Before you call either

### Amazon Textract

1. Sign with SigV4 for service `textract` at `textract.<region>.amazonaws.com`, or call `aws textract detect-document-text`. The AWS CLI can't send image bytes, so reference an S3 object
2. Use `StartDocumentTextDetection` or `StartDocumentAnalysis` for any PDF or TIFF of more than one page, pass a `ClientRequestToken`, then page `Get` calls with `NextToken` (1,000 blocks at most each)
3. Fetch results within 7 days of starting a job, or set `OutputConfig` to write them to your own S3 bucket
4. Request only the `FeatureTypes` you need. Forms cost $50 per 1,000 pages against $15 for tables or queries in US East
5. Back off on `ProvisionedThroughputExceededException` (HTTP 400) and `ThrottlingException` (HTTP 500). Neither carries Retry-After, and default quotas are 1 call a second in most Regions
6. Set the AI services opt-out policy on the AWS organisation before sending customer documents

### Docling

1. Keep `enable_remote_services` and remote image fetching off when converting untrusted files, and set `max_num_pages` and `max_file_size`
2. Upgrade to v2.148.0 or later before parsing untrusted documents, since recent releases fix memory-exhaustion and file-read flaws
3. Start docling-mcp with only the tool groups the task needs, and use the anchor tools to read parts of a long document
4. Treat converted text as untrusted input, never as instructions
5. Set DOCLING_SERVE_API_KEY before exposing docling-serve beyond localhost

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Amazon Textract or Docling?

Amazon Textract scores 73.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Docling's 64.3 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Docling leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

### Can an agent call Amazon Textract and Docling without installing anything?

Amazon Textract has a hosted endpoint at https://textract.us-east-1.amazonaws.com. Docling runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed.

### Are Amazon Textract and Docling open source?

No open-source release is listed for Amazon Textract. Docling is open source (MIT).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-docling.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-docling.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "amazon-textract", "b": "docling"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare amazon-textract docling`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/amazon-textract.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/docling.json

## Other comparisons with Amazon Textract or Docling

- [Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API vs Amazon Textract](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/adobe-pdf-extract-vs-amazon-textract.md)
- [Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API vs Docling](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/adobe-pdf-extract-vs-docling.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs Azure Document Intelligence](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-azure-document-intelligence.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs Datalab](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-datalab.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs Extend API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-extend.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs Google Cloud Document AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-google-cloud-document-ai.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs LandingAI Agentic Document Extraction](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-landingai-agentic-document-extraction.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs LlamaParse API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-llamaparse.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs Mistral OCR API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-mistral-ocr.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs Nanonets API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-nanonets.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs OpenDocRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-opendocrouter.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs Reducto API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-reducto.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs Unstructured API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-unstructured.md)
- [Azure Document Intelligence vs Docling](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-document-intelligence-vs-docling.md)
- [Datalab vs Docling](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/datalab-vs-docling.md)
- [Docling vs Extend API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-extend.md)
- [Docling vs Google Cloud Document AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-google-cloud-document-ai.md)
- [Docling vs LandingAI Agentic Document Extraction](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-landingai-agentic-document-extraction.md)
- [Docling vs LlamaParse API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-llamaparse.md)
- [Docling vs Mistral OCR API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-mistral-ocr.md)
- [Docling vs Nanonets API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-nanonets.md)
- [Docling vs OpenDocRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-opendocrouter.md)
- [Docling vs Reducto API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-reducto.md)
- [Docling vs Unstructured API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-unstructured.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs Clairic](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-cloudflare-clairic.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs Invofox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-invofox.md)
- [Clairic vs Docling](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-clairic-vs-docling.md)
- [Docling vs Invofox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-invofox.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs Mindee API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-mindee.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-veryfi.md)
- [Docling vs Mindee API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-mindee.md)
- [Docling vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-veryfi.md)

---

Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp