Question 1

What’s the difference between Form Recognizer and OCR?

Accepted Answer

OCR turns an image or PDF into readable text. Form Recognizer (Azure AI Document Intelligence) goes further by understanding document structure—like extracting key-value pairs (e.g., "Invoice Number: 123"), tables, and fields from specific document types—so you get structured data, not just raw text.

Question 2

When should I use Form Recognizer (Azure AI Document Intelligence)?

Accepted Answer

Use it when you need to reliably extract structured data from documents at scale—like invoices, receipts, IDs, contracts, or custom forms. It’s a good fit if manual data entry is slow or error-prone, if you have many document formats, or if you want an API-driven workflow that outputs JSON you can feed into databases, ERPs, or automation tools.

Question 3

How much does Form Recognizer cost?

Accepted Answer

Pricing is typically usage-based and depends on factors like the model type (prebuilt vs custom), the number of pages processed, and the features used (e.g., OCR/layout vs higher-level extraction). Costs also vary by region and SKU. For accurate estimates, use the Azure pricing page and calculate based on expected monthly page volume and which model(s) you’ll call.

Form Recognizer

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