Three OCR-capable models dropped within days of each other in June 2026. Mistral OCR 4 is a managed enterprise solution. DeepSeek Vision V4 is a general-purpose multimodal model with strong OCR capabilities. Baidu Unlimited-OCR is a free, MIT-licensed model you run yourself. They’re aimed at different audiences, but they all extract text from documents, so let’s compare them honestly.
I’ve spent time with all three. Here’s what actually matters when choosing between them.
The Quick Comparison
| Feature | Mistral OCR 4 | DeepSeek Vision V4 | Baidu Unlimited-OCR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $4/1K pages ($2 batch) | $0.14-$1.74/M tokens | Free (self-hosted) |
| Model type | Dedicated OCR | General multimodal | Dedicated OCR |
| Languages | 170 | 50+ | 40+ |
| Bounding boxes | Yes (paragraph-level) | No | Yes (layout boxes) |
| Confidence scores | Yes | No | No |
| Self-hosting | Enterprise only | MIT license | MIT license |
| Batch processing | Native endpoint | Manual batching | Manual batching |
| Multi-page PDF | Yes | Per-page | Single-pass (up to 40 pages) |
| Parameters | Undisclosed | Large (MoE) | 3B |
| Context window | N/A (page-based) | 90K tokens | 32K tokens |
Pricing Deep Dive
This is where the differences get stark.
Mistral OCR 4 charges per page: $4 per 1,000 standard, $2 batch. Simple, predictable. A 10-page PDF costs $0.04 (or $0.02 in batch). You know exactly what you’ll spend before you start.
DeepSeek Vision V4 charges per token: $0.14/M input tokens and $1.74/M output tokens. A typical document page might use 1,000-2,000 input tokens (for the image) plus output tokens for the extracted text. For simple documents, this can be cheaper than Mistral. For complex multi-page documents with lots of text output, it can get more expensive. The math depends on your specific documents.
Baidu Unlimited-OCR is free. Zero API costs. You pay only for the hardware to run it: a GPU with at least 8GB VRAM for the 3B model, or a modern MacBook with the MLX quantization. If you already have GPU infrastructure, the marginal cost per document is effectively nothing.
For a broader pricing picture across all multimodal APIs, check our best multimodal AI APIs price comparison.
OCR Quality
Mistral OCR 4
Top score on OlmOCRBench. 72% win rate in blind human evaluations. This is the quality leader right now, full stop. It handles:
- Complex table layouts with merged cells
- Mathematical formulas
- Mixed-language documents
- Low-quality scans and faxes
- Handwriting (limited but improving)
The block classification (titles, tables, formulas, signatures) adds structure that pure text extraction misses.
DeepSeek Vision V4
DeepSeek V4 isn’t a dedicated OCR model, it’s a general-purpose vision-language model that happens to be good at reading documents. It won’t give you bounding boxes or block classification. What it will give you is flexible, conversational document understanding.
Ask it “what’s the total on this invoice?” and it’ll answer directly. Ask it to “extract all line items as JSON” and it’ll do that too. It’s more like having a smart assistant read your document than running a structured extraction pipeline.
For OCR-specific quality, it trails Mistral on structured output but competes well on raw text extraction accuracy. We covered its document capabilities in detail in our DeepSeek Vision OCR guide.
Baidu Unlimited-OCR
Impressive for a 3B model. Built on the DeepSeek-OCR architecture (SAM+CLIP DeepEncoder vision tower with a DeepSeek-V2 MoE decoder), it punches above its weight. Key strengths:
- Multi-page PDF processing in a single pass (up to 40 pages)
- Tables exported as HTML
- Equations exported as LaTeX
- Layout-aware bounding boxes
It won’t match Mistral OCR 4 on the benchmarks, but for many real-world documents (invoices, receipts, contracts, academic papers) the quality is more than good enough. And you can’t beat free.
Language Support
Mistral OCR 4: 170 languages. The clear winner. If you process documents in lesser-supported scripts (Tibetan, Georgian, Amharic), Mistral is likely your only option among these three.
DeepSeek Vision V4: 50+ languages. Strong on major world languages. CJK, European, Arabic, Devanagari are all well-covered. Smaller scripts may struggle.
Baidu Unlimited-OCR: 40+ languages. Good coverage of CJK (unsurprisingly, given Baidu’s origin), European languages, and Arabic. Gaps in less common scripts.
Self-Hosting Options
This matters more than people think. Data sovereignty, latency, cost at scale, these are real concerns.
Mistral OCR 4: Enterprise self-hosting available, but you need a contract with Mistral. Not open-source. Not something you can just download and run. If you want on-prem, you’ll negotiate pricing and deployment with their sales team.
DeepSeek Vision V4: MIT license. Fully self-hostable. The model weights are on HuggingFace. You can run it on your own GPUs with vLLM, SGLang, or raw Transformers. No phone call to anyone required. The tradeoff: it’s a large model that needs serious GPU resources. For a complete self-hosting walkthrough, see our self-hosting DeepSeek Vision guide.
Baidu Unlimited-OCR: MIT license. At 3B parameters (6.78GB), it’s small enough to run on consumer hardware. Supports vLLM, SGLang, Ollama, llama.cpp, and MLX (Apple Silicon). GGUF quantizations available for even smaller footprints. This is the most accessible self-hosted option.
Enterprise Features
If you’re building a production document pipeline for a large organization, you care about more than raw accuracy:
| Feature | Mistral OCR 4 | DeepSeek Vision V4 | Baidu Unlimited-OCR |
|---|---|---|---|
| SLA guarantee | Yes | No (self-hosted) | No |
| Managed scaling | Yes | No | No |
| Batch endpoint | Yes (native) | No | No |
| Enterprise support | Yes | Community | Community |
| SOC 2/ISO 27001 | Yes (la Plateforme) | Self-managed | Self-managed |
| Azure integration | Yes (Microsoft Foundry) | No | No |
Mistral wins the enterprise feature set by a wide margin. That’s the premium you pay for: not just quality, but operational maturity.
When to Choose Each
Choose Mistral OCR 4 if:
- You need the highest possible accuracy
- You process documents in many languages (especially uncommon ones)
- You want bounding boxes and confidence scores for compliance
- You’re on Azure and want native Foundry integration
- You need an enterprise SLA and don’t want to manage infrastructure
- Batch processing at scale is a requirement
Choose DeepSeek Vision V4 if:
- You want flexible document understanding (not just extraction)
- You’re already using DeepSeek for other vision tasks
- You need MIT-licensed self-hosting on your own GPUs
- Token-based pricing works better for your document mix
- You want to ask questions about documents, not just extract text
- Budget is a primary concern and documents are relatively simple
For a full tutorial on using DeepSeek for OCR, see our Python tutorial.
Choose Baidu Unlimited-OCR if:
- You need completely private OCR (nothing leaves your device)
- Budget is zero and you have available hardware
- You process lots of multi-page PDFs (single-pass is a big advantage)
- You want structured output (tables as HTML, equations as LaTeX)
- You’re running on Apple Silicon and want native MLX performance
- You want to integrate OCR into a larger self-hosted pipeline
Real-World Performance Notes
In my testing across a mix of English invoices, Japanese contracts, and French academic papers:
- Mistral OCR 4 handled everything well. Zero failures. Bounding boxes were pixel-accurate. Confidence scores correctly flagged a blurry section in one scan.
- DeepSeek Vision V4 extracted text accurately from clean documents but struggled with a complex multi-column layout. No spatial data means you lose layout information.
- Baidu Unlimited-OCR surprised me on the multi-page Japanese contract. Single-pass processing kept context across pages, and the HTML table output was usable without post-processing. It did miss some fine print in a low-res scan.
The Verdict
There’s no single winner. These tools serve different needs:
- Best quality, managed: Mistral OCR 4
- Most flexible, open-source: DeepSeek Vision V4
- Best free, lightweight OCR: Baidu Unlimited-OCR
If cost is no object and you want the best results with the least effort, go with Mistral. If you want to own your infrastructure and have GPU budget, DeepSeek gives you the most flexibility. If you want to run OCR locally for free with surprisingly good results, Baidu Unlimited-OCR is remarkable for a 3B model.
The OCR space hasn’t been this competitive in years. That’s good news for everyone building document processing pipelines.
FAQ
Which OCR model is cheapest for high-volume processing?
Baidu Unlimited-OCR is free if you have the hardware. For managed services, Mistral’s batch pricing at $2/1K pages beats Google Document AI at $5/1K pages. DeepSeek can be cheaper for simple, text-light documents but gets expensive with complex pages.
Can I switch between these models easily?
Not trivially. Mistral and DeepSeek have different API formats and output structures. Baidu requires local deployment. Building an abstraction layer over all three is possible but adds complexity. Pick one for your primary pipeline.
Which model handles handwriting best?
Mistral OCR 4 has the best handwriting recognition among the three, though none are specialized for handwriting. For heavily handwritten documents, consider dedicated handwriting recognition models.
Do any of these work offline?
DeepSeek Vision and Baidu Unlimited-OCR can both run completely offline once deployed locally. Mistral OCR 4 requires internet access unless you have an enterprise self-hosting contract.
Which is best for processing Japanese/Chinese documents?
All three handle CJK well. Baidu has a natural advantage with Chinese (being Baidu), and handles Japanese contracts impressively in testing. Mistral OCR 4 has the broadest claimed language support. DeepSeek is solid across CJK but lacks spatial output.
Can I use multiple models together?
Yes, and it’s a smart approach. Use Baidu Unlimited-OCR for bulk processing, then route low-confidence or complex documents to Mistral OCR 4 for higher-quality extraction. This hybrid approach optimizes cost while maintaining quality where it matters.