# Azure Document Intelligence vs Extend API + MCP (slim)

> Azure Document Intelligence scores 66 (B) on agent readiness against Extend API + MCP's 62.9 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Extend API + MCP leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do docs parse. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes…

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-document-intelligence-vs-extend.md (~2,650 tokens) · this version ~730 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-document-intelligence-vs-extend.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-document-intelligence-vs-extend
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

Azure Document Intelligence scores 66 (B) on agent readiness against Extend API + MCP's 62.9 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Extend API + MCP leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do docs parse.

- Azure Document Intelligence: B 66, rank #280 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/azure-document-intelligence.min.md
- Extend API + MCP: B 62.9, rank #374 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/extend.min.md
- Azure Document Intelligence, good for Teams already on Azure that want OCR, layout to Markdown and prebuilt invoice, receipt, identity and tax models with Entra ID and regional processing. Ahead on Reliability, 82 against 67; Security & auth, 71 against 43; Transparency & trust, 78 against 67.
- Extend API + MCP, good for Teams building production extraction with evaluation sets and versioned processors, and for agents that need to build or tune extractors as well as run them. Ahead on Payments & pricing, 30 against 20; Maintenance & community, 82 against 40. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install.

| Category | Azure Document Intelligence | Extend API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 82 | 67 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 86 | 87 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 64 | 68 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 71 | 43 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 40 | 82 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 78 | 67 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Azure Document Intelligence | Extend API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Microsoft Azure | Extend |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.extend.ai` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Price for docs parse | not published | $6.25 per 1,000 pages |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Microsoft's Product Terms. The client libraries are MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | none | 86 |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `ai.extend/extend` |
| Last release | 2026-10-06 | 2026-09-25 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-09-14 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-01 | 2026-09-14 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 386k npm/wk, 2.1M PyPI/wk | 124k npm/wk, 59k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 4/5 (2) |