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Best ID/passport parsing APIs in 2023

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We are excited to be featured as one of the Best ID/Passport Parsing APIs on the market. To learn more about how you can utilize our API, be sure to contact a member of our team.

What is OCR ID / passport?

ID/Passport Parser or OCR ID/Passport (Optical Character Recognition) is a technology that allows software and application to recognize and extract information from images of identification documents such as passports, ID cards, and driver’s licenses. The technology uses OCR algorithms to scan the image of the document and convert the visual text, such as name, date of birth, and passport number, into machine-readable text.

ID parsing with Eden AI API

OCR ID/Passport API is commonly used for identity verification as the technology can automate the process of data extracting. Meanwhile, it saves time and reduces the risk of human error compared to manual data entry.

ID/passport parsing APIs uses cases

You can use ID/Passport OCR in numerous fields, here are some examples of common use cases:

  • E-commerce: verify the identity of customers who make purchases online, helping to reduce fraud and improve the customer experience.
  • Financial services: quickly and accurately onboard new customers by extracting information from their identification documents, reducing the risk of errors.
  • Human resources: automate the process of extracting information from candidate identification documents, such as passports or ID cards, allowing to speed up the hiring process and reduce the risk of human error.
  • Healthcare: verify the identity of patients and ensure the accuracy of their medical records.
  • Government: automate the process of issuing passports, visas, and other forms of identification.
  • Law enforcement: quickly extract information from identification documents during investigations. It can also help identify suspects and track down fugitives.
  • Travel and hospitality: can be used by airlines, hotels, and other travel and hospitality businesses to quickly extract information from identification documents during the check-in process.

Top identity parsing APIs on the market

While comparing ID/Passport Parsing APIs, it is crucial to consider different aspects, among others, cost security and privacy. ID/Passport OCR experts at Eden AI tested, compared, and used many ID/Passport OCR APIs of the market. Here are some actors that perform well (in alphabetical order):

1. Amazon Textract – Available on Eden AI

ID Parsing API provided by AWS can extract a variety of information, such as text, key-value pairs, and tables, from various ID and passport documents. It also has the ability to analyze the layout and structure of an ID document and extract key fields automatically. Additionally, Amazon Textract uses Machine Learning to enhance its precision and accuracy over time.

2. Base64.ai – Available on Eden AI

Base64.ai offers a fast and accurate API that can extract key fields and biometric data for ID documents from over 200 countries, including MRZ (machine-readable zone), face image, signature image, and barcode data. The company’s OCR technology is based on deep learning, which allows it to accurately read text in various fonts and languages.

3. Google Cloud Vision  

Google Cloud Vision supports a wide range of document types and can accurately recognize text in various languages and fonts. They also provide advanced OCR capabilities, including detecting and correcting common errors, such as misread characters or incorrectly recognized text.

4. IDScan.net

IDScan.net is specialized in Identity Parsing API, which can accurately recognize and extract data from a wide range of ID and passport documents around the world. The API is equipped with advanced features such as image processing and data verification, which ensure that extracted data is accurate. Their full ID authentication solution puts IDs through more than 400 AI-powered security checks, detecting up to 95% of fake IDs.

5. Klippa

Klippa offers an ID Parsing API that can automatically scan, parse, and classify many document types (passports, ID cards, driving licenses). Additionally, the technology includes features such as document type recognition, data validation, and fraud detection to guarantee the accuracy and security of extracted data.

6. Microsoft Azure Computer Vision – Available on Eden AI

Microsoft Azure offers an ID/Passport Parsing API that can extract text and data from passports, visas, and other travel documents. It can automatically detect the document type and orientation, which can be useful for processing documents at scale. In addition, the API can detect text in various languages.

7. Mindee – Available on Eden AI

Mindee’s technology has the ability to recognize documents from over 150 countries and supports multiple languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, and Latin. Additionally, it can extract information from both MRZ (Machine-Readable Zone) and non-MRZ documents, which is a key differentiator as many other OCR solutions only support MRZ documents.

Mindee’s ID Parsing API also features pre-built and customizable document templates for various document types, making integration easier and faster.

8. Surepass

Surepass offers an API that can extract text and data from a diverse array of ID documents (Passports, Voter IDs, PAN, Vehicle RC, Aadhaar, etc.). With fraud detection included, the technology can perform real-time checks while detecting forged or altered documents through characteristics such as patterns and colors. Moreover, Surepass guarantees highly precise results delivered within a short span of time.

Performance variations of ID/passport OCR APIs

For all companies who use ID/Passport OCR in their software: cost and performance are real concerns. The ID OCR market is quite dense and all those providers have their benefits and weaknesses.

Performances of ID Parsing vary according to the specificity of data used by each AI engine for their model training. This means that some NLP Identity Parsing may perform great for some languages but won’t necessarily for others.

Variation performances depending on the quality of the document

When testing multiple ID/Passport OCR APIs, you will find that providers’ accuracy can be different according to text quality. For example, some Identity Parsing APIs may perform better with handwriting text while others may perform better with digital text.

Variation performances across languages

ID Parsing APIs perform differently depending on the language of the text. Some providers are specialized in specific languages. Different specificities exist in Region specialties: some Identity OCR APIs improve their machine learning algorithm to make them accurate for text in a specific language. For example, some ID Parsing APIs perform well in translating English (US, UK, Canada, South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, Ghana, Ireland, Australia, India, etc.), while others are specialized in Asian languages. Rare language specialty: some ID/Passport Parsing vendors care about rare languages and dialects. You can find ID OCR APIs that allow you to process text in Gujarati, Marathi, Burmese, Pashto, Zulu, Swahili, etc.

Why choose Eden AI to manage your ID/Passport OCR APIs

‍Companies and developers from a wide range of industries (Social Media, Retail, Health, Finances, Law, etc.) use Eden AI’s unique API to easily integrate ID/Passport OCR tasks in their cloud-based applications, without having to build their own solutions.

Eden AI offers multiple AI APIs on its platform amongst several technologies: Text-to-Speech, Language Detection, Sentiment Analysis, Summarization, Question Answering, Data Anonymization, Speech Recognition, and so forth.

We want our users to have access to multiple ID/Passport OCR engines and manage them in one place so they can reach high performance, optimize cost and cover all their needs. There are many reasons for using multiple APIs :

  • Fallback provider is the ABCs: You need to set up a provider API that is requested if and only if the main ID/Passport OCR API does not perform well (or is down). You can use confidence score returned or other methods to check provider accuracy.
  • Performance optimization: After the testing phase, you will be able to build a mapping of providers’ performance based on the criteria you have chosen (languages, fields, etc.). Each data that you need to process will then be sent to the best ID Parsing API.
  • Cost – Performance ratio optimization: You can choose the cheapest Identity OCR provider that performs well for your data.
  • Combine multiple AI APIs: This approach is required if you look for extremely high accuracy. The combination leads to higher costs but allows your AI service to be safe and accurate because ID/Passport OCR APIs will validate and invalidate each other for each piece of data.

How Eden AI can help you?

‍Eden AI has been made for multiple AI APIs use. Eden AI is the future of AI usage in companies. Eden AI allows you to call multiple AI APIs.

Multiple AI engines in one API

  • Centralized and fully monitored billing on Eden AI for all ID/Passport Parsing APIs
  • Unified API for all providers: simple and standard to use, quick switch between providers, access to the specific features of each provider
  • Standardized response format: the JSON output format is the same for all suppliers thanks to Eden AI’s standardization work. The response elements are also standardized thanks to Eden AI’s powerful matching algorithms.
  • The best Artificial Intelligence APIs in the market are available: big cloud providers (Google, AWS, Microsoft, and more specialized engines)
  • Data protection: Eden AI will not store or use any data. Possibility to filter to use only GDPR engines.

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