OCR Buddy
Faithful, 100% local OCR Chrome extension for text, code, formulas, and tables with no hallucination.
OCR Buddy
What is OCR Buddy?
OCR Buddy vs Similar AI Tools
| Pricing Model | Free | Free, Freemium | Free, Freemium | Paid |
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How to use OCR Buddy?
- 1Install the OCR Buddy extension from Chrome Web Store.
- 2Select a region, viewport, or capture the full page.
- 3Choose the read mode: Text/Code, Formula, or Table.
- 4Review the extracted result with source crop comparison.
- 5Copy or download the output as plain text, Markdown, or LaTeX.
OCR Buddy Key Features
- Region, viewport, and full page capture
- Text/Code OCR with syntax highlighting and layout reconstruction
- Formula to LaTeX with KaTeX rendering for verification
- Table to Markdown using geometric reconstruction
- Page to Markdown via DOM structure with hybrid image OCR
- 100% local processing, no data leaves the device
- Multi-language support (Latin, CJK, Cyrillic, etc.)
- Low-confidence word flagging and source crop display
OCR Buddy Use Cases
- Extracting code from a paused video
- OCR-ing text from PDFs or images
- Converting mathematical formulas to LaTeX
- Turning table screenshots into Markdown
- Capturing full web pages as clean Markdown for LLMs
OCR Buddy Pricing & Free Credits
OCR Buddy currently operates on a Free model.
This tool is completely free to use
OCR Buddy Pros & Cons
Pros
- Privacy-first: all processing on-device
- No hallucinated text, faithful transcription
- Supports multiple capture modes and read modes
- Offline capable with bundled models
- Open source with permissive license
Cons
- Chrome only (requires WebGPU in workers)
- No Arabic language support
- Full page capture may interleave columns or duplicate sticky headers
- Formula mode can misread complex, low-resolution formulas
- No auto-fix for pipe vs I/l ambiguity
What is OCR Buddy best for?
- Developers needing reliable code OCR
- Researchers extracting text from academic papers
- Students converting math images to LaTeX
- Privacy-conscious users avoiding cloud OCR
- Anyone requiring faithful OCR without hallucination
OCR Buddy FAQ
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