What is the difference between OCR and document extraction?
OCR recognizes text in a document. Document extraction turns that recognized content into named fields, tables, JSON, confidence scores, validation results, and workflow-ready data.
Short answer
OCR recognizes text in a document. Document extraction turns that recognized content into named fields, tables, JSON, confidence scores, validation results, and workflow-ready data.
What this means in practice
OCR is a necessary stage for many scanned documents, but it does not know which text is the invoice total, which row belongs to a table, or whether a date is valid.
Document extraction adds structure and business meaning on top of text recognition.