PaddleOCR

PaddleOCR

Reads text out of pictures in several languages with PaddleOCR in a Gradio page, with Chinese, English and Japanese example images. For anyone who needs the words from a photo or scan.

Made by PaddlePaddle on Hugging Face. These notes are Mindket's, written from its Space page and README; the app's own files and license are on Hugging Face.

About

What it is: This Gradio app from PaddlePaddle pulls text out of images in several languages. The repository holds three example pictures, one each in Chinese, English and Japanese. You use it in a browser, or you run a copy on your own computer.

Who it suits: It suits anyone who has text locked in a photo or scan, and developers who want to see how PaddleOCR is wrapped in a web page.

Industry | Who uses it | How they use it | Example
Office work | Admin staff | Get the words out of a scanned page | Upload a scan and read the text it returns
Translation | Translators | Copy text from pictures in Chinese, English or Japanese | Try the example picture in the language they need
Software | Python developers | Read how an OCR model sits behind a Gradio page | Download the Space and open app.py

Skip it if you need a batch pipeline for thousands of pages, because this is a single-page demo.

Where to use it:

• A web browser: go to the Space on Hugging Face and try it with no install
• Windows, macOS or Linux: run a copy with Python

Use case | Who | What they get back
Read a photo | Anyone | The text found in the picture
Check languages | Translators | Text read from Chinese, English or Japanese examples
Study the code | Developers | An app.py that wires PaddleOCR to a Gradio page

How to set it up: You need a few things in place first.

• Python with pip, on Windows, macOS or Linux
• An internet connection to fetch the files from Hugging Face
• Spare disk space, since the packages and model files for OCR can be large

1. Install the Hugging Face hub package.
2. Download the Space into a local folder.
3. Move into that folder.
4. Install Gradio 5.23.1 and the packages listed in requirements.txt.
5. Start the app.

pip install -U huggingface_hub
hf download PaddlePaddle/PaddleOCR --repo-type space --local-dir PaddleOCR
cd PaddleOCR
pip install gradio==5.23.1
pip install -r requirements.txt
python app.py

How to use it: Online, use the Gradio interface the Space page shows. On your own computer, run the main file from the project folder and open the page it serves in your browser.

python app.py

Example: You run python app.py inside the project folder, open the page and give it en_example.jpg from the repository. The page returns the English text it finds in the picture.

For newcomers and experts: If this is new to you, start online. Go to the Space and try one of the three example pictures before you install anything. OCR means the program reads the words in an image.

If you know the field, note that the Space pins Gradio 5.23.1 and ships a packages.txt and a font file named simfang.ttf next to app.py. The source gives no accuracy figures or language list, so test your own images.

Open the Space or run app.py
The Gradio page loads
You give it a picture
PaddleOCR reads the text
The text appears on the page

Good to know: OCR can misread blurry or unusual text, so check the result against the picture before you rely on it.

• License: apache-2
• Cost to run: none named, no API key, account or paid service
• Data it reaches: the pictures you give it and the files in the repository, with nothing else listed

On Hugging Face, 13 November 2026

• Likes: 133
• Built with: gradio
• License: apache-2.0

Links

• Space: https://huggingface.co/spaces/PaddlePaddle/PaddleOCR
• Files: https://huggingface.co/spaces/PaddlePaddle/PaddleOCR/tree/main

Try it

Open the Space in your browser, or copy it to your own Hugging Face account from its page. Nothing in this kit runs by itself.