Free OCR & image recognition API

Quick Start

1. Get an API Key

Sign up at optiic.dev/signup to get your API key. A free tier is available.

2. Add to Your Project

NPM (Node.js, React, Vue, Next.js, etc.):

npm install optiic

// ESM
import Optiic from 'optiic';

// CommonJS
const Optiic = require('optiic');

const optiic = new Optiic({ apiKey: 'YOUR_API_KEY' });

const result = await optiic.process({
  url: 'https://optiic.dev/assets/images/samples/we-love-optiic.png',
});

console.log(result.text); // "We love Optiic!"

Script tag (no build tools needed):

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/optiic@latest/dist/optiic.min.js"></script>
<script>
  const optiic = new Optiic({ apiKey: 'YOUR_API_KEY' });

  optiic.process({
    url: 'https://optiic.dev/assets/images/samples/we-love-optiic.png',
  }).then(result => {
    console.log(result.text);
  });
</script>

Features

• Extract text from images and PDFs via OCR
• Submit images as remote URLs, local file paths (Node.js), file inputs, or File objects (browser)
• Works in both Node.js and browser environments
• Supports .png, .jpeg, .pdf, and more

API

new Optiic(options)

| Option | Type | Default | Description | |--------|------|---------|-------------| | apiKey | string | '' | Your API key from optiic.dev | | url | string | 'https://api.optiic.dev' | API base URL (override for self-hosting or local dev) | | debug | boolean | false | Enable debug logging |

optiic.process(options)

| Option | Type | Default | Description | |--------|------|---------|-------------| | url | string, HTMLInputElement, File | required | Image source: remote URL, local path, file input, or File object | | mode | string | 'ocr' | Recognition mode | | language | string | 'en' | Language hint for OCR |

You can also pass a pre-built FormData instance directly to process().

Returns a Promise that resolves with:

{
  text: "We love Optiic!",
  language: "en",
}

Usage Examples

Remote URL

const result = await optiic.process({
  url: 'https://optiic.dev/assets/images/samples/we-love-optiic.png',
});

Local file path (Node.js only)

const result = await optiic.process({
  url: '/Users/username/Desktop/my-image.png',
});

HTML file input (browser)

<input type="file" id="image-input" accept="image/*">

<script>
  document.querySelector('#image-input').addEventListener('change', async (e) => {
    const result = await optiic.process({
      url: e.target,
    });
    console.log(result.text);
  });
</script>

curl

# OCR with remote URL
curl -X POST https://api.optiic.dev/process \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://optiic.dev/assets/images/samples/we-love-optiic.png"}'

# OCR with local file
curl -X POST https://api.optiic.dev/process \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -F "image=@/path/to/image.png"

Development

npm start        # Watch mode - rebuilds on file changes
npm run build    # One-time build (ESM, CJS, IIFE)
npm test         # Run tests

Build Outputs

| File | Format | Use Case | |------|--------|----------| | dist/index.mjs | ESM | import in modern bundlers (webpack, Vite, etc.) | | dist/index.js | CJS | require() in Node.js | | dist/optiic.min.js | IIFE (minified) | <script> tag / CDN |

License

MIT