Docling Serve vs olmOCR
Short answer
Docling Serve: Docling document conversion (PDF, Office, images to Markdown/JSON) as a self-hosted API with a demo UI. olmOCR: Ai2's vision-language OCR that turns PDFs and scans into clean Markdown, including tables, equations and handwriting. Both are in our Document processing category.
Choose Docling Serve if you want: no GPU server needed and an actively maintained project (olmOCR is stale).
Choose olmOCR if you want: larger community (19.8k vs 1.9k GitHub stars).
Docling Serve publishes no official RAM figure, so we cannot compare hosting cost directly.
Last updated · computed from each project's official docs and live GitHub data · sources
Docling Serve vs olmOCR side by side
| Docling Serve | olmOCR | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Document processing | Document processing |
| What it is | Docling document conversion (PDF, Office, images to Markdown/JSON) as a self-hosted API with a demo UI. | Ai2's vision-language OCR that turns PDFs and scans into clean Markdown, including tables, equations and handwriting. |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| License type | Permissive | Permissive |
| License conditions | Permissive. Internal and commercial use allowed; keep the license notice. | Permissive. Internal and commercial use, modification and redistribution allowed; keep the license and notices. |
| Status | Active | Stale (no commit in 180+ days) |
| GitHub stars | 1.9k | 19.8k |
| Last commit | Oct 27, 2026 | Mar 25, 2026 |
| Latest release | v1.38.2 | v0.4.27 |
| Minimum hardware | Not published | 30 GB disk |
| Recommended hardware | Not published | Not published |
| RAM measured by us | Not tested yet | Not tested yet |
| GPU | CPU-only image (docling-serve-cpu) is published; CUDA 12.8 and 13.0 images are available for NVIDIA GPUs, and an AMD ROCm image can be built locally. DOCLING_DEVICE picks cpu, cuda or mps, otherwise the best device is chosen. | Required for local inference: a recent NVIDIA GPU with at least 12 GB of GPU RAM (tested on RTX 4090, L40S, A100, H100). Without a GPU you can point it at a remote vLLM or OpenAI-compatible server. |
| Est. server cost | Not estimated | GPU server (not estimated) |
| Deploy method | Container (Podman or Docker) | Docker (GPU image with model included) |
| Known gotchas | 4 listed | 3 listed |
| Telemetry | Not documented | Not documented |
| Calls home by default | Not documented | Not documented |
| SSO (OIDC / SAML / LDAP) | Not documented | Not documented |
| Audit log | Not documented | Not documented |
| RBAC | Not documented | Not documented |
| Details | Full Docling Serve guide → | Full olmOCR guide → |
Key differences
- License: Docling Serve: MIT (Permissive). olmOCR: Apache-2.0 (Permissive).
- GPU: Docling Serve: optional / see notes. olmOCR: needed for practical use.
- Est. server cost: Docling Serve: not estimated (no official RAM figure). olmOCR: GPU server (not estimated).
- Deploy: Docling Serve: Container (Podman or Docker) · Container (Podman or Docker). olmOCR: Docker (GPU image with model included) · single container.
- Status: Docling Serve: Active. olmOCR: Stale (no commit in 180+ days).
- GitHub stars: Docling Serve: 1.9k. olmOCR: 19.8k.
- Last commit: Docling Serve: Oct 27, 2026. olmOCR: Mar 25, 2026.
- Latest release: Docling Serve: v1.38.2 (Oct 27, 2026). olmOCR: v0.4.27 (Mar 12, 2026).
Same for both: Category: Document processing; Official hardware: not published.
Docling Serve vs olmOCR: FAQ
Docling Serve or olmOCR: which should a small business choose?
Choose Docling Serve if you want: no GPU server needed and an actively maintained project (olmOCR is stale). Choose olmOCR if you want: larger community (19.8k vs 1.9k GitHub stars). Docling Serve publishes no official RAM figure, so we cannot compare hosting cost directly.
Which is cheaper to self-host, Docling Serve or olmOCR?
Docling Serve: not estimated (no official RAM figure). olmOCR: GPU server (not estimated). Our estimate is the cheapest Hetzner Cloud plan that meets each project's official RAM and vCPU figure; it covers the server only.
How much hardware do Docling Serve and olmOCR need?
Docling Serve: not published. olmOCR: not published. olmOCR needs a GPU for practical use.
What is the license difference between Docling Serve and olmOCR?
Docling Serve: MIT (Permissive). Permissive. Internal and commercial use allowed; keep the license notice. olmOCR: Apache-2.0 (Permissive). Permissive. Internal and commercial use, modification and redistribution allowed; keep the license and notices. This is a summary, not legal advice.
Is Docling Serve or olmOCR more actively maintained?
Docling Serve: Active, last commit Oct 27, 2026. olmOCR: Stale (no commit in 180+ days), last commit Mar 25, 2026. GitHub data refreshed Nov 3, 2026.
Which is easier to deploy, Docling Serve or olmOCR?
Docling Serve installs via Container (Podman or Docker) (Container (Podman or Docker)); olmOCR via Docker (GPU image with model included) (single container). Docling Serve lists 4 known gotchas and olmOCR lists 3; see each app page.
Related
- Docling Serve self-hosting guide · olmOCR self-hosting guide
- All Docling Serve alternatives, ranked
- All olmOCR alternatives, ranked
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- Docling Serve vs OCRmyPDF
- Docling Serve vs PaddleOCR
- Docling Serve vs Paperless-AI
- Docling Serve vs paperless-gpt
- Docling Serve vs Paperless-ngx
- Docling Serve vs Unstract
- MinerU vs olmOCR
- OCRmyPDF vs olmOCR
- olmOCR vs PaddleOCR
- olmOCR vs Paperless-AI
- olmOCR vs paperless-gpt
- Add a third app in the interactive comparison
Sources
- Docling Serve GitHub repository: github.com/docling-project/docling-serve
- Docling Serve documentation: github.com/docling-project/docling-serve/blob/main/docs/README.md
- Docling Serve license: github.com/docling-project/docling-serve/blob/main/LICENSE
- Docling Serve hardware requirements: github.com/docling-project/docling-serve#container-images
- Docling Serve deploy instructions: github.com/docling-project/docling-serve#getting-started
- olmOCR GitHub repository: github.com/allenai/olmocr
- olmOCR documentation: github.com/allenai/olmocr#readme
- olmOCR license: github.com/allenai/olmocr/blob/main/LICENSE
- olmOCR hardware requirements: github.com/allenai/olmocr#python-installation
- olmOCR deploy instructions: github.com/allenai/olmocr#using-docker
- Hetzner Cloud pricing used for cost estimates (read 2026-11-01): www.hetzner.com/cloud/regular-performance
- GitHub REST API (stars, commits, releases): docs.github.com/en/rest
Every value is generated from the same verified data as the app pages. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.