# Azure Document Intelligence vs OpenDocRouter

> Azure Document Intelligence scores 66 (B) on agent readiness against OpenDocRouter's 56.6 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. OpenDocRouter leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do docs parse. Category scores, facts, verdicts and…

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- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

Azure Document Intelligence scores 66 (B) on agent readiness against OpenDocRouter's 56.6 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. OpenDocRouter leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do docs parse.

- Azure Document Intelligence: grade B, 66/100, rank #280 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/azure-document-intelligence.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/azure-document-intelligence.json
- OpenDocRouter: grade C, 56.6/100, rank #568 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/opendocrouter.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/opendocrouter.json

## Which one, for what

### Azure Document Intelligence (B)

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 43
- Security & auth, 71 against 40
- Transparency & trust, 78 against 47

Watch for: Every analysis is asynchronous. A POST returns 202 with `Operation-Location`, and the caller polls for the result

### OpenDocRouter (C)

Good for: Agents that need page-level markdown from PDFs and images and want to choose or compare models on price and published benchmark scores with one key.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 84 against 64
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 65 against 40

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: Launched on 7 October 2026. The domain was registered on 23 September 2026 and both SDKs have one release, 1.0.0


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Azure Document Intelligence | OpenDocRouter | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 82 | 43 | Azure Document Intelligence +39 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 86 | 85 | Azure Document Intelligence +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 64 | 84 | OpenDocRouter +20 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 71 | 40 | Azure Document Intelligence +31 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 30 | OpenDocRouter +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 40 | 65 | OpenDocRouter +25 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 78 | 47 | Azure Document Intelligence +31 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **66 · B** | **56.6 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Azure Document Intelligence | OpenDocRouter |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Microsoft Azure | LlamaIndex |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://www.opendocrouter.ai/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Price for docs parse | not published | $0.80 per 1,000 pages |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Microsoft's Product Terms. The client libraries are MIT | Proprietary service under the LlamaIndex Terms of Service with an OpenDocRouter addendum. The Python and TypeScript SDKs are MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-06 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-10-07 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-01 | 2024-03-30 |
| 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 | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 386k npm/wk, 2.1M PyPI/wk | 127 PyPI/wk |

## Verdicts

**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.

**OpenDocRouter.** One endpoint reaches 11 parsing models, each with a dated recipe version, a published token price and a ParseBench score, and failed pages aren't charged. The service launched on 7 October 2026, so it has no status page, incident history, SLA or changelog yet, and no key scopes were found in the reviewed documentation.

## Before you call either

### 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

### OpenDocRouter

1. Call `GET /v1/models` first, which needs no key, and choose a model by `avg_charge_per_page_usd` and its ParseBench scores. Send its `id` as `model`
2. Send `cache: true` on any request you might repeat. Without it the markdown exists only in the POST response and a resend is charged as a new request
3. Raise the SDK timeout above its 60-second default for sync parses. Pages can run for 270 seconds and the SDKs retry a timed-out request twice
4. Check every page's `status` before using its markdown. A 200 can be `partial`, and failed pages can be resent alone with `pages`
5. Treat 402 as final until credit is added. The hold is the model's maximum charge per page times the page count, and `GET /v1/credits` shows `available_usd`

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Azure Document Intelligence or OpenDocRouter?

Azure Document Intelligence scores 66 (B) on agent readiness against OpenDocRouter's 56.6 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. OpenDocRouter leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

### Do Azure Document Intelligence and OpenDocRouter need an API key?

Azure Document Intelligence takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. OpenDocRouter needs an API key.

### Can an agent call Azure Document Intelligence and OpenDocRouter without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Azure Document Intelligence. OpenDocRouter has a hosted endpoint at https://www.opendocrouter.ai/v1.


## For agents

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

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