Free or affordable OCR and ICR (handwriting recognition) SDK?
I'm looking to integrate OCR and ICR recognition functionality into a business app we're building to scan forms and other such documents. I've searched for hours and come up with Abbyy, IRIS and another few companies that market their SDKs with 4 figure prices. Do you know of any OCR/ICR engines that are free or affordable?
Answer
While doing an educational app, we thought of integrating the handwriting recognition. After doing some research, here are three options that we found to be good. Probably there could be more options
1) Myscript from Vision objects -
Pro:- The software has one of the best recognition. Cons:- Sadly there is no sales support. You have to keep chasing them to get a response. This is only from my personal experience. Infact, I got an appointment for a phone call and I stayed awake full night (due to time zone difference), but nope, no call came and neither an email. As this is only the pre-sales experience, we could just imagine how the post sales support would be. Hence we dropped them right away. But i do hope that this is one-off and only my experience and they are fine with others.
2) Phatware Writepad SDK from Phatware
Pro - Another good software Cons - It is not a con on them. Its just that it is out of our budget for now. I am putting this in because the Original poster of the question appears to be searching for a free SDK.
3) Lipi Tool kit from HP Labs India
Pro - open source Cons - not available for iOS & limited languages
For now, we have decided to go with the Lipi for Android and wait for something good or affordable for us to be used on iOS.