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Amazon Textract vs Azure AI Vision
October 13, 2024 | Author: Adam Levine
7★
Amazon Textract is a machine learning (ML) service that automatically extracts text, handwriting, and data from scanned documents.
6★
Azure AI Vision is a unified service that offers innovative computer vision capabilities. Give your apps the ability to analyze images, read text, and detect faces with prebuilt image tagging, text extraction with optical character recognition (OCR), and responsible facial recognition. Incorporate vision features into your projects with no machine learning experience required.
Amazon Textract and Azure AI Vision are like two competing galactic bureaucracies in the vast cloud universe, both tasked with the thankless job of extracting text from the endless tide of documents. Imagine them as the Vogon and Gorgon of OCR, each with their quirks and distinct allegiances. Textract, firmly stationed on Planet AWS, is perfectly happy to beam its text-finding algorithms directly into the arms of any business already tangled up in the AWS web of interconnected services. It does this with the sort of smug satisfaction that comes from knowing it’ll never have to leave the familiar, cozy embrace of the AWS ecosystem. Meanwhile, Azure AI Vision hails from the Microsoft Azure quadrant and it, too, thrives on the symbiotic relationship with the rest of the Azure empire. If you’re already wearing the Microsoft badge, well, it’s just terribly convenient to let Azure handle all that pesky text extraction. Otherwise, intergalactic migration might be in order.
Pricing, you say? Well, both of these cosmic services operate on the rather inscrutable "pay-as-you-go" principle—meaning you’ll pay only for what you use, unless you use more than you thought, at which point you'll probably need to sell a small moon to cover the bill. Textract lets you pay per page and Azure AI Vision follows suit, though the exact costs are buried deep in documentation, much like the meaning of life itself. Both graciously offer free tiers, like a benevolent bureaucrat tossing you a form to fill out before you’re fully committed. But don’t get too comfortable; those free tiers are more like a free sample at a galactic fast-food joint—just enough to tantalize, not enough to satisfy.
Ultimately, deciding between Textract and Azure AI Vision is like choosing between a hyperdrive and a wormhole: both will get you there, but it’s all about which universe you’re already flying through. If you're already hurtling through the AWS galaxy, Textract’s your guy; stuck in the Microsoft vortex? Azure’s got you covered. Just be prepared for a lot of paperwork either way.
See also: Top 10 OCR Software
Pricing, you say? Well, both of these cosmic services operate on the rather inscrutable "pay-as-you-go" principle—meaning you’ll pay only for what you use, unless you use more than you thought, at which point you'll probably need to sell a small moon to cover the bill. Textract lets you pay per page and Azure AI Vision follows suit, though the exact costs are buried deep in documentation, much like the meaning of life itself. Both graciously offer free tiers, like a benevolent bureaucrat tossing you a form to fill out before you’re fully committed. But don’t get too comfortable; those free tiers are more like a free sample at a galactic fast-food joint—just enough to tantalize, not enough to satisfy.
Ultimately, deciding between Textract and Azure AI Vision is like choosing between a hyperdrive and a wormhole: both will get you there, but it’s all about which universe you’re already flying through. If you're already hurtling through the AWS galaxy, Textract’s your guy; stuck in the Microsoft vortex? Azure’s got you covered. Just be prepared for a lot of paperwork either way.
See also: Top 10 OCR Software
