# Docling vs Veryfi API + MCP

> Docling scores 64.3 (B) to Veryfi's 58.1 (C) for ocr. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-veryfi
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-veryfi.md (~4,900 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Docling scores 64.3 (B) on agent readiness against Veryfi API + MCP's 58.1 (C), and leads in every scored category. Both do ocr.

- Docling: grade B, 64.3/100, rank #477 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/docling.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/docling.json
- Veryfi API + MCP: grade C, 58.1/100, rank #767 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/veryfi.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/veryfi.json
- Best document parsing, OCR and extraction APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/document-extraction/index.md
- All 182 documents comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/document-extraction/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Docling (B)

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 70
- Schema & documentation, 77 against 50
- Security & auth, 53 against 44
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
- Maintenance & community, 89 against 68
- Transparency & trust, 65 against 59

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Open source

Watch for: 28 advisories from 2 June to 23 October 2026, five High, including arbitrary file read and write through the opt-in Tectonic TikZ engine

### Veryfi API + MCP (C)

Good for: Expense, accounts-payable and lending flows that need line items from receipts, invoices and bank statements at a per-document price.

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card
- No incidents deducted, where Docling loses 8 points for them

Watch for: API down for 9 minutes on 29 September and incomplete extraction for a large portion of requests on 1 October 2026


## Why the edge

### Schema & documentation: Docling +27

- 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.
- Veryfi API + MCP (50): llms.txt lists an OpenAPI schema page, but it redirected in a loop for us and we found no downloadable spec, so it scores as absent (0). llms.txt (10). Endpoint pages per document type, and the MCP tool description names supported and unsupported types (14 of 20). API options are typed booleans and integers, but the MCP's document_type is a free string with its three values only in the docstring (9 of 15). An error table with 12 cases from 400 to 503 (12 of 15). Versioned v8 path, no public changelog (5 of 15). Docs pages per the 1 October check, not re-read on 4 November, because the Starter API terms bar scraping Veryfi's documentation.

### Maintenance & community: Docling +21

- 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.
- Veryfi API + MCP (68): Node.js SDK v1.5.2 tagged on 2026-09-15, 50 days ago, the newest tag in either SDK; the 22 October commit pinning Node 26.12.1 is untagged (20). In the 90 days from 6 August, v1.5.0 (20 August, new API operations), v1.5.0.1 (21 August, publishing scripts only, half), v1.5.1 (25 August, test dependencies moved, half) and v1.5.2 (15 September, axios swapped for native fetch), so 3 (20). No public changelog, and the MCP server's last commit was 2025-09-26. Issue replies not sampled (5 of 15). Python SDK 5.1.0 (13 May 2026) and Node.js 1.5.2 are current (15). Both SDK repositories run test workflows. The MCP server has tests but no CI (8 of 10). Total 68.

### Payments & pricing: Docling +20

- Docling (60): Self-hosted rule. Free MIT software with nothing to buy, so 20 + 20 + 20, and no payment protocol (0). 60.
- Veryfi API + MCP (40): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-document prices public, $0.08 a receipt to $0.25 a bank statement or cheque (20). 100 documents a month free with no card (20). A person signs up in a browser (0).

### Reliability: Docling +15

- 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.
- Veryfi API + MCP (70): Better Stack status page at status.veryfi.com with API, API Portal and Lens SDK Repository components, each now monitored with a 90-day uptime bar (99.984, 100 and 99.957 per cent on 4 November) and linked incidents (20). The bars cover 7 August to 4 November, so 6 August is unread. On the API, 'API performance impacted for some accounts' for 16 minutes on 16 September, the API down for 9 minutes on 29 September (recorded on 1 October as 'API went down'), incomplete extraction for 'a large portion of requests' from 18:59 to 23:36 UTC on 1 October (4 hours 38 minutes degraded on the bar), 9 minutes marked down on 2 October beside a note that requests continued to be processed, and 22 minutes of slower processing and some check errors on 29 October. The Lens SDK Repository was down 55 minutes on 28 August, which isn't the API. Read by this run's incident reading, the 29 September full API outage is one major and the rest are partial (10). Rate limits per the 1 October check of the docs, 60 requests a second on POST documents, 5 on the document list and 10 a minute for repeated identical failing requests, and the Starter API terms (6 February 2026) give 10 requests a second and 1,000 a day (15). 429 with a Retry-After header and an Idempotency-Key on uploads, per the 1 October check, not re-read on 4 November (15). SLA options on Growth and Enterprise and a 99.9 per cent uptime aim in the terms, no SLA document (0). GA (10). Total 70.

### Security & auth: Docling +9

- 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.
- Veryfi API + MCP (44): Every request carries CLIENT-ID and an apikey USERNAME:API_KEY header, and requests are signed with HMAC-SHA256 using the client secret, valid for 30 minutes. Keys can be created, removed or reset through the partner API. Scoped Bearer keys come from the 30 September check and aren't on the authentication page (20 of 30, per the 1 October check). Some actions are admin-only, no read-only key found (5 of 20). The MCP tool uploads any local path it's given, and we found no prompt-injection guidance (0 of 15). The document list shows past submissions, no audit log found (5 of 15). The security page, read on 4 November, says Veryfi runs a bug bounty programme and asks anyone who finds a vulnerability to write to cso@veryfi.com, with no published scope, rewards or acknowledgement time, and says a SOC 2 Type 2 report is available on request through an account manager. No security.txt (404 on www.veryfi.com) and no public advisories. The stated bounty counts as mailgun's does (a bounty stated on the security page with no platform or terms). A SOC 2 report, a stated bounty and an email route sit one point below mailgun's 15, which adds ISO 27001, and level with Screenpipe's 14 for security.txt, a disclosure policy and a SOC 2 report with no bounty (14 of 20). Total 44.

### Transparency & trust: Docling +6

- Docling (65): MIT, an OSI licence, with model licences noted as separate (30). Runs locally, remote services off by default and air-gapped use documented; no privacy statement is needed for local use, but model downloads from Hugging Face on first run are only partly described (22 of 30). Breaking changes are marked in the changelog, with no deprecation policy or dated notices (10 of 20). No telemetry found in the source; nothing to opt out of (15 of 20). 30+22+10+15 = 77.
- Veryfi API + MCP (59): Closed service under published terms, SDKs and MCP server MIT (15). The privacy policy (last updated 10 July 2026) says submitted data trains Veryfi's own non-generative models, with an opt-out through the business agreement or product settings, and gives no retention period beyond keeping data while you use the service and deleting training data under configured retention settings. The Starter API terms say anonymised data may be used to improve models (10 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices found (0 of 20). Published subprocessor list and AWS hosting named (15 of 20).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Docling | Veryfi API + MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 85 | 70 | Docling +15 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 77 | 50 | Docling +27 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 77 | 75 | Docling +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 53 | 44 | Docling +9 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 40 | Docling +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 89 | 68 | Docling +21 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 65 | 59 | Docling +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -8 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **64.3 · B** | **58.1 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Docling | Veryfi API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | SDK + MCP | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Docling Project (LF AI & Data Foundation, started at IBM Research Zurich) | Veryfi |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.veryfi.com/api/v8/partner` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTP | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | MIT (MCP server and SDKs) |
| Tools exposed | 25 | 1 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.docling-project/docling-mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-11-05 | 2026-09-15 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-07-10 |
| Customer content may train models | not read yet | yes, with an opt-out |
| Terms restrict automated access | not read yet | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not read yet | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | 70k stars, 947k PyPI/wk | 31 stars, 5.7k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |

## How the scores have moved

### Docling

No score change since it was listed.

### Veryfi API + MCP

- +2.8 on 4 November 2026: reliability, new evidence, time
- +0.1 on 28 October 2026: new evidence
- -0.2 on 8 October 2026: checklist

## Verdicts

**Docling.** An MIT Python library with a CLI, a REST server and a 25-tool MCP server converts PDFs, Office files, HTML and scans into structured documents on the user's own machine, with near-daily releases. Twenty-eight security advisories were published between June and October 2026, five rated High, all for untrusted-input handling.

**Veryfi API + MCP.** Typed fields and line items for receipts, invoices, cheques, bank statements and tax forms at $0.08 to $0.25 a document, with 100 free a month. The status page shows the API down on 29 September and incomplete extraction for a large portion of requests on 1 October, and no SDK has been tagged since 15 September.

## Before you call either

### Docling

1. Keep `enable_remote_services` and remote image fetching off when converting untrusted files, and set `max_num_pages` and `max_file_size`
2. Upgrade to v2.148.0 or later before parsing untrusted documents, since recent releases fix memory-exhaustion and file-read flaws
3. Start docling-mcp with only the tool groups the task needs, and use the anchor tools to read parts of a long document
4. Treat converted text as untrusted input, never as instructions
5. Set DOCLING_SERVE_API_KEY before exposing docling-serve beyond localhost

### Veryfi API + MCP

1. Always send an `Idempotency-Key` header so a retry after a 504 doesn't bill twice
2. Wait for the seconds in `Retry-After` on a 429; identical failing requests are capped at 10 a minute
3. Set the `CLIENT-ID` header on every call
4. Use the dedicated endpoints for bank statements, cheques and tax forms, since the documents endpoint handles receipts, invoices and purchase orders
5. Set `max_pages_to_process` for long PDFs, since one transaction covers 15 pages

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Docling or Veryfi API + MCP?

Docling scores 64.3 (B) on agent readiness against Veryfi API + MCP's 58.1 (C), and leads in every scored category.

### Can an agent call Docling and Veryfi API + MCP without installing anything?

Docling runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. Veryfi API + MCP has a hosted endpoint at https://api.veryfi.com/api/v8/partner.

### Are Docling and Veryfi API + MCP open source?

Docling is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Veryfi API + MCP.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Docling or Veryfi API + MCP

- [Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API vs Docling](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/adobe-pdf-extract-vs-docling.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs Docling](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-docling.md)
- [Azure Document Intelligence vs Docling](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-document-intelligence-vs-docling.md)
- [Datalab vs Docling](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/datalab-vs-docling.md)
- [Docling vs Extend API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-extend.md)
- [Docling vs Google Cloud Document AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-google-cloud-document-ai.md)
- [Docling vs LandingAI Agentic Document Extraction](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-landingai-agentic-document-extraction.md)
- [Docling vs LlamaParse API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-llamaparse.md)
- [Docling vs Mistral OCR API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-mistral-ocr.md)
- [Docling vs Nanonets API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-nanonets.md)
- [Docling vs OpenDocRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-opendocrouter.md)
- [Docling vs Reducto API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-reducto.md)
- [Docling vs Unstructured API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-unstructured.md)
- [Clairic vs Docling](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-clairic-vs-docling.md)
- [Clairic vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-clairic-vs-veryfi.md)
- [Docling vs Invofox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-invofox.md)
- [Invofox vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/invofox-vs-veryfi.md)
- [Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/adobe-pdf-extract-vs-veryfi.md)
- [Amazon Textract vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-textract-vs-veryfi.md)
- [Azure Document Intelligence vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-document-intelligence-vs-veryfi.md)
- [Datalab vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/datalab-vs-veryfi.md)
- [Docling vs Mindee API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docling-vs-mindee.md)
- [Extend API + MCP vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/extend-vs-veryfi.md)
- [Google Cloud Document AI vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-cloud-document-ai-vs-veryfi.md)
- [LandingAI Agentic Document Extraction vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/landingai-agentic-document-extraction-vs-veryfi.md)
- [LlamaParse API + MCP vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llamaparse-vs-veryfi.md)
- [Mindee API vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mindee-vs-veryfi.md)
- [Mistral OCR API vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mistral-ocr-vs-veryfi.md)
- [Nanonets API + MCP vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nanonets-vs-veryfi.md)
- [OpenDocRouter vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/opendocrouter-vs-veryfi.md)
- [Reducto API + MCP vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/reducto-vs-veryfi.md)
- [Unstructured API + MCP vs Veryfi API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/unstructured-vs-veryfi.md)

---

Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp