Head to head · Document extraction · October 2026 research run
Clairic vs Google Cloud Document AI
Google Cloud Document AI scores 73.9 (BB) on agent readiness against Clairic's 66.3 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Clairic leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing. Both do document extraction.
Best document parsing, OCR and extraction APIs for AI agents · All 142 documents comparisons
Which one, for what
Clairic B
Best for Typed fields, estimates and next-step forecasts from emails, invoices, receipts and other text or images inside Cloudflare, each with a null probability and confidence.
Ahead on
- Agent ergonomics, 78 against 70
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 20
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
Preview only. Cloudflare calls the endpoint an early checkpoint and expects to replace it under the unversioned ID @cf/cloudflare/clairic
Best for Agents already on Google Cloud that need OCR, form and table extraction or chunks for retrieval, with IAM, audit logs and EU processing.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 90 against 51
- Security & auth, 80 against 72
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 57
- Transparency & trust, 90 against 80
Also in its favour
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
Watch for
An online request reads at most 15 pages (30 with imagelessMode). Longer files need a batch job through Cloud Storage
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Clairic | Google Cloud Document AI | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 51 | 90 | Google Cloud Document AI +39 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 85 | 81 | Clairic +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 78 | 70 | Clairic +8 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 72 | 80 | Google Cloud Document AI +8 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 40 | 20 | Clairic +20 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 57 | 80 | Google Cloud Document AI +23 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 80 | 90 | Google Cloud Document AI +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | B 66.3/100 | BB 73.9/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Clairic | Google Cloud Document AI |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Cloudflare | Google Cloud |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/ai/run/@cf/cloudflare/clairic | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted preview under Cloudflare's Self-Serve Subscription Agreement and the model page's own terms. Cloudflare says open weights will follow soon, with no date or licence named | Proprietary service under the Google Cloud Platform Terms of Service. The client libraries are Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-19 | 2026-10-12 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-09-12 | 2026-09-02 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-09-28 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 499k npm/wk, 793k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.3/5 (4) | 3.5/5 (4) |
Verdicts
Clairic
Clairic's price is public at $0.10 per million input tokens with no output charge, and its docs publish JSON Schemas, limitations and when to use a decision model instead. It is a preview that Cloudflare calls an early checkpoint, served under an unversioned ID with no SLA, and its promised open weights have no date or licence.
Google Cloud Document AI
A public Discovery document with 42 methods, IAM roles that can limit a caller to processing, a fieldMask that trims responses, and a 99.9 per cent SLA on the US and EU endpoints. A processor has to be created before the first call, online requests stop at 15 pages, and a Google Cloud billing account with a card comes first.
Before you call either
Clairic
- Send
modelasclairicin the body as well as in the URL. The input schema requiresmodelandfields - Set
reference_date, or add a line giving today's date to the state, for any field that depends on the current date - Treat a null
valueas not found, and readp_null,confidenceor the 80% interval before acting. Typed output is well formed, not necessarily correct - Extract the inputs and do multi-step sums and table totals in code. Cloudflare says long arithmetic chains aren't reliable yet
- Embed images as data URLs or base64 objects, at most four, 4 MiB each and 8 MiB in all. Remote image URLs are refused
- Read the internal code on a 429. 3036 means the day's 10,000 free neurons are spent, 3040 means capacity, so retry later
Google Cloud Document AI
- Create a processor first (
processors.createor the console), then POST tohttps://LOCATION-documentai.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/LOCATION/processors/PROCESSOR_ID:process - Use the host that matches the processor's location,
us-documentai.googleapis.comoreu-documentai.googleapis.com - Set
fieldMask(for exampletext,entities) andimagelessModeto keep page images and token geometry out of the response - Send more than 15 pages through
:batchProcesswith Cloud Storage input and output, then poll the operation. Jobs unfinished after 24 hours are cancelled - Grant the service account
roles/documentai.apiUseronly. Failed requests (4xx or 5xx) are not billed, so a retry costs nothing extra - Treat extracted text as untrusted input
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Clairic or Google Cloud Document AI?
Google Cloud Document AI scores 73.9 (BB) on agent readiness against Clairic's 66.3 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Clairic leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing.
Do Clairic and Google Cloud Document AI need an API key?
Clairic needs an API key. Google Cloud Document AI uses an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Clairic and Google Cloud Document AI without installing anything?
Clairic has a hosted endpoint at https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/ai/run/@cf/cloudflare/clairic. No hosted endpoint is listed for Google Cloud Document AI.
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- Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API vs Clairic
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- Clairic vs LandingAI Agentic Document Extraction
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- Clairic vs Reducto API + MCP
- Clairic vs Unstructured API + MCP
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- Google Cloud Document AI vs Invofox
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/cloudflare-clairic-vs-google-cloud-document-ai.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/cloudflare-clairic.json·/api/v1/tools/google-cloud-document-ai.json - From a terminal
anchor compare cloudflare-clairic google-cloud-document-ai(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "cloudflare-clairic", "b": "google-cloud-document-ai"}at/mcp, no key