Python
Unstructured
Turn any file into LLM-ready data
by Unstructured-IO · Apache-2.0
Document AI & OCRETL for documentsApache-2.0Self-hostedPythonIntermediate
From the README
Install
docker pull downloads.unstructured.io/unstructured-io/unstructured:latest
- Install the Python SDK to support all document types with pip install "unstructured[all-docs]"
- For plain text files, HTML, XML, JSON and Emails that do not require any extra dependencies, you can run pip install unstructured
- To process other doc types, you can install the extras required for those documents, such as pip install "unstructured[docx,pptx]"
- Install the following system dependencies if they are not already available on your system.
Excerpts from the project README on GitHub. Copyright and licensing remain with the respective authors.
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🚀 Latest release ·
What is Unstructured?
Unstructured extracts and normalizes content from PDFs, HTML, Word, emails and more into clean elements ready for embedding and RAG ingestion.
Why people choose Unstructured
- One API for dozens of file formats
- Chunking strategies designed for RAG
- Widely adopted in the LLM data stack
Unstructured at a glance
| Category | Document AI & OCR |
| Type | ETL for documents |
| License | Apache-2.0 |
| Runs locally | Self-hosted |
| Built with | Python |
| Skill level | Intermediate |
| Best for | teams ingesting many file types into one pipeline |
Latest releases
Open-source alternatives to Unstructured
Other open-source document ai & ocr tools worth comparing:
MarkerConvert PDFs to clean Markdown fast
DoclingIBM-grade document understandingSuryaModern OCR with layout detection
PaddleOCRIndustrial OCR with tiny models
FirecrawlTurn websites into LLM-ready Markdown
Crawl4AIOpen-source LLM-friendly crawler
olmOCRTurn PDFs into clean training-grade text
MinerUPDF to Markdown with formulas and tables
TesseractThe classic OCR engineUnstructured head-to-head
Unstructured vs MarkerUnstructured vs DoclingUnstructured vs SuryaUnstructured vs PaddleOCRUnstructured vs FirecrawlUnstructured vs Crawl4AIUnstructured vs olmOCRUnstructured vs MinerUUnstructured vs Tesseract
FAQ
Is Unstructured free?
Unstructured is free and open-source (Apache-2.0 license), so you can use, self-host and modify it at no cost.
Can I run Unstructured locally?
Yes. Unstructured is designed to run on your own machine or server, keeping your data private.
What is the best alternative to Unstructured?
Popular open-source alternatives include Marker, Docling, Surya. See the comparisons above to choose.
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