BiGapiguides
POST /v1/ocr → 200 application/pdf · 1¢/page

OCR API — scanned PDF or image to searchable text

Tesseract with German + English models. Output: searchable PDF (text layer under the scan), plain text, or JSON per page. Billed per page – the price scales with the work.

Quick start (curl)

Get a key first – no signup: curl -X POST https://api.bigapi.dev/v1/keys (100 free operations, 7 days).

curl -X POST https://api.bigapi.dev/v1/ocr -H 'Authorization: Bearer $KEY' -F 'file=@scan.pdf' -F 'lang=deu+eng' -F 'output=pdf' -o searchable.pdf

Give it to your agent (MCP)

Add BiGapi to Claude Desktop, Cursor or any MCP client – the server fetches its own key on first use:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bigapi": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@bigapi/mcp"] }
  }
}

Then simply ask: “OCR this scanned PDF and give me the plain text.” – the model calls the ocr tool.

When your agent needs this

Parameters

ParamTypeRequiredNotes
filefileyesScanned PDF or image (PNG, JPEG, TIFF).
langstringnoTesseract language codes, e.g. deu, eng, deu+eng. – default deu+eng
outputstringnoSearchable PDF, plain text, or JSON with text per page. – one of pdf, text, json · default pdf
dpiintegernoRasterisation DPI for PDF input (100–600). – default 300

Pricing

1¢ per page (final cost in X-BigAPI-Cost)
First 100 operations free (per key, 7 days) · failed calls (4xx/5xx) cost $0 · repeats with Idempotency-Key are free · prepaid credit from $5, never expires.

Every response carries X-BigAPI-Cost, X-BigAPI-Balance and X-BigAPI-Free-Ops – your agent can budget on its own; X-BigAPI-Pages reports the page count.

Errors your agent can handle

StatusMeaningAgent action
401missing/invalid keyPOST /v1/keys for a fresh one
402credit exhaustedshow the upgrade_url from the response to a human
413file too largesplit the input (limit 100 MB)
422conversion failedcheck the detail field – costs $0
429rate limitedwait retry_after seconds

FAQ

Which languages?

deu, eng or deu+eng (default). More on request – the demand log decides.

How is it billed?

1 cent per page. A 12-page scan costs 12¢; the exact amount is in X-BigAPI-Cost.

What does output=json return?

{"pages":[{"page":1,"text":"…"}]} – ideal for feeding a model page by page.