Alternatives to MinerU

A document parser that converts PDFs, Office files and scans into Markdown and JSON. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.

Replacements

Listings that take over the same core job as MinerU.

  • Marker

    An open-source tool that converts PDFs and other documents to Markdown, JSON and HTML.

    FreeOpen sourceSelf-hostedCommand line

    Marker converts PDFs and other documents to Markdown, JSON and HTML under an Apache-2.0 code licence, with model weights under a separate licence.

  • olmOCR

    Open-source toolkit that uses a vision language model to turn PDFs and scans into Markdown.

    FreeOpen sourceLinuxCommand line

    olmOCR turns PDFs and scans into Markdown using an open vision language model and keeps reading order, but requires a capable GPU and Linux.

  • MarkItDown

    Python command-line tool that converts PDFs, Office files and other documents into Markdown.

    FreeOpen sourceWindowsmacOSLinuxCommand line

    MarkItDown is a lighter MIT Python tool converting PDFs and Office files to Markdown, aimed at LLM input rather than high-fidelity parsing of formulas and scans.

  • PaddleOCR

    OCR toolkit that turns PDFs and images into structured data.

    FreeOpen sourceWindowsmacOSLinuxCommand line

    PaddleOCR is Apache-2.0 licensed and outputs structured JSON and Markdown from layout, table and formula parsing, relying on PaddlePaddle.

Also worth comparing

These listings name MinerU as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.

  • Docling

    Open source library that converts documents into AI-ready structured formats.

    FreeOpen sourceWindowsmacOSLinuxCommand line

    MinerU converts PDFs, Office files and scans into Markdown and JSON with OCR and several local backends, but its licence is not a standard OSI licence.

  • EasyOCR

    Python OCR library covering more than eighty languages out of the box.

    FreeOpen sourceWindowsmacOSLinuxCommand line

    MinerU parses PDFs, Office files and scans into Markdown and JSON with OCR, offering several local model backends, though its license is not a standard OSI license.

  • pdf2htmlEX

    A command-line converter that turns PDF files into HTML while keeping text and layout.

    FreeOpen sourceLinuxCommand line

    MinerU parses PDFs and scans into Markdown and JSON for pipelines, with OCR support, rather than producing layout-faithful HTML pages.

Similar software

Related functionality, not a direct replacement.