What OCR API should I use for bank statements and shipping docs?

If your goal is bank statements and shipping documents, I’d recommend choosing an OCR/document extraction API based on structured field extraction, not just plain text OCR.

Best overall options

1. Google Cloud Document AI

   • Very strong for forms, tables, invoices, statements
   • Good accuracy on semi-structured docs
   • Strong layout analysis
   • Good if you want a general-purpose production solution

2. Azure AI Document Intelligence

   • Also excellent for bank statements, receipts, shipping docs
   • Good built-in models plus custom extraction
   • Nice if you’re already on Microsoft Azure

3. AWS Textract

   • Good for text, tables, forms
   • Reliable and scalable
   • Good if you’re already in AWS, but sometimes less flexible than the above for complex layouts

If you need highest accuracy / custom workflows

• ABBYY FlexiCapture / Vantage
  • Often considered a top choice for enterprise document processing
  • Strong for messy real-world statements and logistics docs
  • More expensive and heavier to implement

For shipping docs specifically

If you need to extract fields like:

• tracking number
• shipper/consignee
• addresses
• bill of lading numbers
• package counts
• weights

then Azure Document Intelligence or Google Document AI are usually the easiest starting points.

For bank statements specifically

Look for:

• transaction tables
• account number masking
• running balances
• statement period
• merchant/description parsing

Here, Google Document AI and ABBYY tend to be especially strong.

My practical recommendation

• Fastest path to production: Azure AI Document Intelligence or Google Document AI
• Best enterprise-grade extraction for messy docs: ABBYY
• Best if already deep in AWS: Textract

If you want, I can also give you:

• a side-by-side comparison table
• a recommendation based on your cloud stack
• or a cheap/open-source alternative list.