PDF Inspector

Fast PDF classification and region-based text extraction for Node.js/Bun. Native Rust performance via napi-rs.

Built by Firecrawl for hybrid OCR pipelines — extract text from PDF structure where possible, fall back to OCR only when needed.

Features

• Smart classification — text-based / scanned / image-based / mixed in ~10–50ms, with a confidence score and per-page OCR routing.
• Region-based extraction — pull text from bounding boxes with per-region quality checks (needsOcr).
• Layout-aware — multi-column reading order, position and font info per text item, RTL support.
• Robust text decoding — CID/Type0 fonts via ToUnicode CMaps, plus automatic flagging of broken encodings so callers can fall back to OCR.
• Lightweight — native Rust core via napi-rs, no ML models, no external services; ~5–6 MB platform binary, TypeScript definitions included.

Benchmark

opendataloader-bench corpus (200 PDFs), local engines without model-based PDF parsing; OCR disabled. Scores 0–1, higher is better:

Engine	Overall	Reading order	Tables (TEDS)	Headings	Speed
pdf-inspector	0.875	0.915	0.814	0.788	2.8s
liteparse	0.870	0.908	0.693	0.811	13.9s
opendataloader	0.843	0.912	0.489	0.760	9.8s
pymupdf4llm	0.735	0.886	0.401	0.424	15.5s
markitdown	0.583	0.879	0.000	0.000	6.7s

Refreshed July 16, 2026, on Apple M4 Pro; speed is the median of three complete corpus runs. Full methodology and versions are in the repo README.

Install

npm install @firecrawl/pdf-inspector
# or
bun add @firecrawl/pdf-inspector

Prebuilt binaries for Linux x64, macOS ARM64, and Windows x64 — npm installs only the one matching your platform. No Rust toolchain needed.

API

classifyPdf(buffer: Buffer): PdfClassification

Classify a PDF as TextBased, Scanned, Mixed, or ImageBased (~10-50ms). Returns which pages need OCR.

import { classifyPdf } from '@firecrawl/pdf-inspector'
import { readFileSync } from 'fs'

const pdf = readFileSync('document.pdf')
const result = classifyPdf(pdf)

console.log(result.pdfType)        // "TextBased" | "Scanned" | "Mixed" | "ImageBased"
console.log(result.pageCount)      // 42
console.log(result.pagesNeedingOcr) // [5, 12, 15] (0-indexed)
console.log(result.confidence)     // 0.875

extractTextInRegions(buffer: Buffer, pageRegions: PageRegions[]): PageRegionTexts[]

Extract text within bounding-box regions from a PDF. Designed for hybrid OCR pipelines where a layout model detects regions in rendered page images, and this function extracts text from the PDF structure for text-based pages — skipping GPU OCR.

Each region result includes a needsOcr flag that signals unreliable extraction (empty text, GID-encoded fonts, garbage text, encoding issues). When the cause is a suspected garbled text layer, ocrReason is set to "suspected_garbled_text".

import { extractTextInRegions } from '@firecrawl/pdf-inspector'

const result = extractTextInRegions(pdf, [
  {
    page: 0, // 0-indexed
    regions: [
      [0, 0, 300, 400],    // [x1, y1, x2, y2] in PDF points, top-left origin
      [300, 0, 612, 400],
    ]
  }
])

for (const region of result[0].regions) {
  if (region.needsOcr) {
    // Unreliable text — send this region to OCR instead
  } else {
    console.log(region.text) // Extracted text in reading order
  }
}

Types

interface PdfClassification {
  pdfType: string          // "TextBased" | "Scanned" | "Mixed" | "ImageBased"
  pageCount: number
  pagesNeedingOcr: number[] // 0-indexed page numbers
  confidence: number        // 0.0 - 1.0
}

interface PageRegions {
  page: number              // 0-indexed
  regions: number[][]       // [[x1, y1, x2, y2], ...] in PDF points, top-left origin
}

interface PageRegionTexts {
  page: number
  regions: RegionText[]
}

interface RegionText {
  text: string
  needsOcr: boolean         // true when text is unreliable
  ocrReason?: string        // "suspected_garbled_text" when known
}

Platforms

Prebuilt binaries ship as platform-specific packages installed automatically via optionalDependencies:

Platform	Architecture	Package
Linux	x64 (glibc)	@firecrawl/pdf-inspector-linux-x64-gnu
macOS	ARM64	@firecrawl/pdf-inspector-darwin-arm64
Windows	x64	@firecrawl/pdf-inspector-win32-x64-msvc

License

MIT