Mistral OCR Tested: Pros, Cons, and How It Compares to Other OCR Models

Introduction

We are excited to announce that Mistral OCR is now available in Parsio! Mistral AI has introduced what they call “the world’s best document understanding API”, and now, you can leverage its powerful OCR capabilities directly within Parsio.

If you need to extract text from PDFs, images, and scanned documents with high accuracy, Mistral OCR is one of the most advanced solutions available. Its AI-powered engine understands layouts, tables, and even complex document structures. With this integration, Parsio makes it easy to use Mistral OCR without coding — just forward, import, or upload your documents, and let our system handle the rest.

In this article, we will explore:

• What Mistral OCR is and how it works
• How you can use it in Parsio without writing a single line of code
• A quick-start guide if you want to test Mistral OCR’s official API
• Issues we identified during our tests
• A comparison between Mistral OCR and Parsio’s default OCR
• The pros and cons of Mistral OCR

Let’s dive in!

What is Mistral OCR?

Mistral OCR is a state-of-the-art document understanding API developed by Mistral AI. Unlike traditional OCR systems that simply extract text, Mistral OCR understands document layouts and structures, preserving tables, headings, paragraphs, and images.

Key Features of Mistral OCR:

✅ AI-powered document parsing – understands document layout instead of just reading text

✅ High accuracy – better recognition for complex documents, including tables and forms

✅ Fast processing – optimized for speed, capable of handling large document batches

✅ Structured data output – extracts content in JSON or Markdown while maintaining document formatting

✅ Multilingual support – works with various languages without requiring additional configurations

✅ Extracts images from PDFs – allows retrieval of embedded images alongside text extraction

With these capabilities, Mistral OCR is an excellent choice for businesses and individuals who need high-quality document digitization.

Using Mistral OCR in Parsio (No-Code Solution)

The best part? You don’t need to write a single line of code to use Mistral OCR in Parsio!

How It Works:

1. Forward an email with a PDF or image attachment to your Parsio mailbox
2. Import files directly from cloud storage (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.)
3. Manually upload documents via the Parsio web interface
4. Select Mistral OCR as the parsing engine
5. Extract text, tables, and structured data in seconds!

That’s it! Parsio handles everything behind the scenes, ensuring you get structured, accurate results without any technical setup.

Testing Mistral OCR’s Official API (For Developers)

If you prefer to test Mistral OCR’s official library directly, here’s a quick example:

from mistralai import Mistral
from pathlib import Path
from mistralai import DocumentURLChunk
from mistralai.models import OCRResponse


api_key = "API_KEY"
client = Mistral(api_key=api_key)


def replace_images_in_markdown(markdown_str: str, images_dict: dict) -> str:
    for img_name, base64_str in images_dict.items():
        markdown_str = markdown_str.replace(f"![{img_name}]({img_name})", f"![{img_name}]({base64_str})")
    return markdown_str


def get_combined_markdown(ocr_response: OCRResponse) -> str:
  markdowns: list[str] = []
  for page in ocr_response.pages:
    image_data = {}
    for img in page.images:
      image_data[img.id] = img.image_base64
    markdowns.append(replace_images_in_markdown(page.markdown, image_data))

  return "\n\n".join(markdowns)


def ocr_pdf_file(file_path: str, output_path: str):
  # Read PDF
  pdf_file = Path(file_path)
  assert pdf_file.is_file()

  # Upload PDF
  uploaded_file = client.files.upload(
      file={
          "file_name": pdf_file.stem,
          "content": pdf_file.read_bytes(),
      },
      purpose="ocr",
  )
  signed_url = client.files.get_signed_url(file_id=uploaded_file.id, expiry=1)

  # OCR
  pdf_response = client.ocr.process(
     document=DocumentURLChunk(document_url=signed_url.url), 
     model="mistral-ocr-latest", 
     include_image_base64=True
     )

  # Output to Markdown
  output_markdown = get_combined_markdown(pdf_response)
  with open(output_path, 'w', encoding='utf-8') as f:
      f.write(output_markdown)



ocr_pdf_file("document.pdf", 'output.md')

For a more detailed interactive guide, check out the OCR Cookbook in Google Colab.

Issues Identified During Testing

While Mistral OCR is impressive, we discovered some limitations during our testing:

🛑 Common Issues:

• Text misclassification: Some PDF pages are mistakenly treated as images, leading to incomplete text extraction.
• Empty image output: In some cases, Mistral OCR outputs an image reference (e.g., img-0.jpeg) with no actual image data.
• Better performance on images than PDFs: Oddly, extracting text from an image version of a document sometimes works better than extracting from a PDF.
• Minor formatting quirks: Occasionally, extracted text contains unexpected newlines or spacing.

These issues don’t occur in every case but are worth noting if you work with highly structured or scanned documents.

Mistral OCR vs. Parsio’s Default OCR

To help you decide which OCR engine to use, here’s a side-by-side comparison:

If you’re dealing with research papers, documents with complex layout, Mistral OCR is likely the better choice.

However, for most use cases, Parsio’s default OCR remains a solid option.

Pros and Cons of Mistral OCR

✅ Pros:

• High accuracy for extracting structured text
• Faster processing speeds
• Better handling of complex document layouts
• Multilingual support

❌ Cons:

• May misclassify some PDFs as images
• Empty image outputs in some cases
• Formatting inconsistencies in certain extractions

Overall, Mistral OCR is a significant upgrade for complex document processing, but it’s not without its quirks.

Conclusion

With Mistral OCR now available in Parsio, users can extract structured data from documents quickly, accurately, and without coding. Whether you’re parsing invoices, contracts, or reports, Mistral OCR offers AI-powered document understanding that outperforms traditional OCR models.

If you’re looking for an easy way to convert PDFs and images into structured text, try Mistral OCR in Parsio today!

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