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Structured Document Extraction API Comparison — What Azure, Google, AWS Each Offer
Does Google and AWS have "document understanding APIs" like Azure prebuilt-contract?
3 Providers: "Simple OCR" vs "Document Understanding"
All 3 offer both:
Simple OCR: image → text (no structure)
Doc Understanding: image → per-field JSON (structured)
Azure — Most Specialized Models (15+)
prebuilt-receipt, contract, invoice, idDocument, creditCard, etc.
Google Document AI — Strongest Custom Processors
Invoice, Expense, ID, Contract parsers + Custom Document Extractor (foundation model based).
AWS Textract — Best Table Extraction
AnalyzeDocument (TABLES/FORMS), AnalyzeExpense, AnalyzeID. No contract-specific.
Comparison
| Azure | AWS | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Specialized models | 15+ | ~10 | ~5 |
| Contract parser | Yes | Yes | No |
| Japanese contracts | No | No | No |
| Custom models | Yes (5+ samples) | Best | Limited |
| Table extraction | Good | Good | Best |
Key Concepts
1
Azure — most specialized models (15+). prebuilt-contract etc. Custom from 5 samples
2
Google Document AI — custom processors are the strength. High accuracy from few samples
3
AWS Textract — best table extraction of all 3. No contract-specific model
4
No Japanese contract model from any provider — prebuilt-layout + LLM is practical
Use Cases
API selection — compare 3 providers for specialized models matching your document type
Cost optimization — compare total cost of simple OCR vs structured vs LLM combo
Japanese contract pipeline — optimal architecture when no dedicated model exists