# Docling vs Extend API + MCP (slim)

> Extend scores 65.5 (B) to Docling's 64.3 (B) for document parsing. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-extend.md (~4,950 tokens) · this version ~2,830 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-extend.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-extend
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Extend API + MCP scores 65.5 (B) on agent readiness against Docling's 64.3 (B), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Docling leads on reliability, agent ergonomics, security & auth, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do document parsing.

- Docling: B 64.3, rank #475 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/docling.min.md
- Extend API + MCP: B 65.5, rank #416 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/extend.min.md
- Docling, good for Self-hosted PDF and Office conversion to Markdown or JSON for RAG and agents that can't send documents out. Ahead on Reliability, 85 against 77; Agent ergonomics, 77 against 68; Security & auth, 53 against 45; Payments & pricing, 60 against 30; Maintenance & community, 89 against 82. Also No key needed to call it; Runs on your own machine; Open source.
- 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 Schema & documentation, 87 against 77; Transparency & trust, 70 against 65. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install; No incidents deducted, where Docling loses 8 points for them.

| Category | Docling | Extend API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 85 | 77 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 77 | 87 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 77 | 68 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 53 | 45 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 89 | 82 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 65 | 70 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Docling | Extend API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | SDK + MCP | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Docling Project (LF AI & Data Foundation, started at IBM Research Zurich) | Extend |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.extend.ai` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Pay per use |
| Price for document parsing | free | $5 per 1,000 pages |
| Licence | MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | 25 | 86 |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.docling-project/docling-mcp` | `ai.extend/extend` |
| Last release | 2026-11-05 | 2026-10-22 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-09-14 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-09-14 |
| Customer content may train models | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 70k stars, 947k PyPI/wk | 124k npm/wk, 59k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 4/5 (2) |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, Docling +30: Docling 60 (Self-hosted rule. Free MIT software with nothing to buy, so 20 + 20 + 20, and no payment protocol (0). 60.); Extend API + MCP 30 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Credit prices and credits per page are published without a login, $0.01 a credit on pay as you go (20). Pay as you go starts with 10,000 free credits, and neither the pricing page nor the credits page says whether a card is needed (10 of 20, our call until that's confirmed). A person signs up in a browser (0).)
- Schema & documentation, Extend API + MCP +10: Docling 77 (No OpenAPI file is published; docling-serve is a FastAPI app that serves its schema when run, and docling-mcp's tools carry typed inputs with Field descriptions from Pydantic (20 of 25). No llms.txt on the docs site; Markdown docs and AGENTS.md in the repository (5 of 10). MCP tool docstrings say what each tool returns and which other tool supplies its key, with little on when not to use one (14 of 20). Pydantic types with descriptions, few enums (12 of 15). Many runnable examples in docs/examples, with errors raised as Python exceptions that name the fix, such as OperationNotAllowed and unknown document keys listing valid ones (11 of 15). Changelog per release (15). 20+5+14+12+11+15 = 77.); Extend API + MCP 87 (OpenAPI 3.1.0 at docs.extend.ai/openapi/api-reference.json, 76 paths and 117 operations on 2 November (25). llms.txt with a Markdown twin of every page (10). The MCP page now lists all 86 tools by group with a one-line purpose each; the tool definitions themselves still need an OAuth session. The API guides say what each processor is for and when to use the async endpoints (12 of 20). Typed request bodies in the spec, depth not re-checked (11 of 15). Error format with code, message, retryable, requestId and docUrl, seven general codes and domain codes on other pages (14 of 15). Dated API versions in the x-extend-api-version header, six of them back to 2024-02-01, plus a changelog of 42 entries with dated pages (15).)
- Agent ergonomics, Docling +9: 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.); Extend API + MCP 68 (The hosted MCP loads every tool by default, 86 by the MCP page's own list, which scores 5 for more than 30. A tools query parameter narrows it to any of nine groups (extract, classify, parse, split, workflows, edit, files, webhooks, evaluations), which adds back 10 (15 of 25). List and output controls not checked in detail (12 of 20). Every error says whether it's retryable and links to docs (20). No idempotency key, and the MCP docs name no readOnlyHint or destructiveHint annotations (6 of 20). A parse call needs only a file. Official SDKs in TypeScript, Python, Java and Go (15).)
- Reliability, Docling +8: 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.); Extend API + MCP 77 (Status page at status.extend.ai, now on incident.io, with a component per deployment (US1, US2, EU1) and incident history (20). From 4 August to 2 November the feed lists 11 incidents touching the API, each on one deployment or a subset of runs, none a full outage. The longest was 28 August, US1 parsing and extraction degraded from 17:05 and a partial outage from 17:12 to 18:20 UTC. 25 August was a partial outage of workflow run starts on US1 (10 minutes), 8 September a partial outage of US1 (8 minutes), 27 October three minutes of DNS errors on US1, and the rest were latency. Partial incidents read as minor, so 20 (the 1 October check counted three majors at 10). Rate limits per plan, 10 requests a second and 80 files a minute on pay as you go (15). 429 with RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED, exponential backoff with jitter, and wait for Retry-After when present. Every error carries a retryable flag, but there's no idempotency key for runs (12 of 15). Custom SLAs on Enterprise only, none published (0). Parse, Extract, Classify and Split are GA (10). 20 + 20 + 15 + 12 + 0 + 10 = 77.)
- Security & auth, Docling +8: 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.); Extend API + MCP 45 (REST calls use bearer keys scoped to one workspace, or organisation keys that only admins can create and that must name a workspace per request, and test-mode keys hit an isolated environment. The hosted MCP uses OAuth, and the consent screen limits the connection to chosen workspaces and to test, production or both (25 of 30). Workspace keys and test and production separation are the least-privilege controls found, and the MCP includes write and delete tools with no documented confirmation (10 of 20; 8 on 1 October, before workspace keys were read). Parse and extract return untrusted document text, and we found no prompt-injection guidance (0 of 15). No audit log or per-call log documented (0 of 15). The docs' compliance page claims SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA and GDPR with reports in the trust centre, which gave security@extend.app per the 1 October check (not re-read on 2 November, a Vanta app page). No security.txt on www.extend.ai and no bug bounty found (10 of 20). 25 + 10 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 45.)
- Maintenance & community, Docling +7: 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.); Extend API + MCP 82 (Python SDK v1.20.0, TypeScript v2.4.0, Java v1.21.0 and Go v0.8.0 on 22 October 2026, 11 days ago (30). Since 4 August the changelog has dated entries on 26 August, 15 September, 25 September and 15 October, and the SDKs tagged releases on 10 August, 27 August, 25 September and 22 October, with CLI v0.7.0 and v0.8.0 on 26 and 27 August (20). Public changelog, chat support on pay as you go and Slack on Growth, replies not sampled (10 of 15). Current official SDKs in four languages (15). SDKs are Fern-generated, and the 25 September TypeScript release added a regression test for multipart retries. CI not checked (7 of 10). 30 + 20 + 10 + 15 + 7 = 82.)