Mistral OCR API vs Veryfi API + MCP

Mistral OCR API

Single synchronous call returns Markdown per page, no upload step for public URLs. OCR API at 99.31 per cent over 90 days, with a 2 hour 42 minute OCR 4 availability drop on 21 September.

Veryfi API + MCP

Typed fields and line items for receipts, invoices, cheques, bank statements and tax forms. API outage on 29 September and degraded, incomplete extraction on 1 October.

Mistral OCR API

1. Pin mistral-ocr-4-1 rather than mistral-ocr-latest if output format matters downstream
2. Set table_format to html for tables with merged cells
3. Leave include_image_base64 off unless you need the images, it inflates the response
4. Pass pages to OCR only the pages you need, since billing is per page
5. Upload private files through /v1/files and pass the signed URL

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