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

Google Cloud Document AI BB

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

CategoryWeight this runClairicGoogle Cloud Document AIEdge
Reliability16%205190Google Cloud Document AI +39
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28581Clairic +4
Agent ergonomics13%16.27870Clairic +8
Security & auth14%17.57280Google Cloud Document AI +8
Payments & pricing10%12.54020Clairic +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85780Google Cloud Document AI +23
Transparency & trust7%8.88090Google Cloud Document AI +10
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 66.3/100BB 73.9/100

Facts side by side

FactClairicGoogle Cloud Document AI
KindModel APIHTTP API
VendorCloudflareGoogle Cloud
Hosted endpointhttps://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/ai/run/@cf/cloudflare/clairicno (local only)
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary 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 namedProprietary service under the Google Cloud Platform Terms of Service. The client libraries are Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-192026-10-12
Terms last updated2025-09-122026-09-02
Privacy policy last updatedno date given2026-09-28
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularitynone499k npm/wk, 793k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3.3/5 (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

  1. Send model as clairic in the body as well as in the URL. The input schema requires model and fields
  2. Set reference_date, or add a line giving today's date to the state, for any field that depends on the current date
  3. Treat a null value as not found, and read p_null, confidence or the 80% interval before acting. Typed output is well formed, not necessarily correct
  4. Extract the inputs and do multi-step sums and table totals in code. Cloudflare says long arithmetic chains aren't reliable yet
  5. Embed images as data URLs or base64 objects, at most four, 4 MiB each and 8 MiB in all. Remote image URLs are refused
  6. 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

  1. Create a processor first (processors.create or the console), then POST to https://LOCATION-documentai.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/LOCATION/processors/PROCESSOR_ID:process
  2. Use the host that matches the processor's location, us-documentai.googleapis.com or eu-documentai.googleapis.com
  3. Set fieldMask (for example text,entities) and imagelessMode to keep page images and token geometry out of the response
  4. Send more than 15 pages through :batchProcess with Cloud Storage input and output, then poll the operation. Jobs unfinished after 24 hours are cancelled
  5. Grant the service account roles/documentai.apiUser only. Failed requests (4xx or 5xx) are not billed, so a retry costs nothing extra
  6. 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.

Other comparisons with Clairic or Google Cloud Document AI

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