Last Updated: 12 Jan, 2026
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is no longer just about converting scanned pages into readable text. In today’s data-driven world, the OCR output format you choose can directly impact searchability, compliance, long-term preservation, automation, and integration with modern applications. From simple text extraction to structured, machine-readable data, each format serves a distinct purpose.
In this detailed guide, we’ll compare the most commonly used OCR output formats—TXT, PDF, PDF/A, XML, and JSON—to help you choose the right one for your workflow, whether you’re building an open-source OCR pipeline, an enterprise document system, or an AI-powered analytics platform.