What is Azure Form Recognizer?
Azure Form Recognizer is a cloud-based Azure Applied AI Service that uses machine learning models to extract and analyze form fields, text, and tables from your documents. Form Recognizer analyzes your forms and documents, extracts text and data, maps field relationships as key-value pairs, and returns a structured JSON output. You quickly get accurate results that are tailored to your specific content without excessive manual intervention or extensive data science expertise. Use Form Recognizer to automate your data processing in applications and workflows, enhance data-driven strategies, and enrich document search capabilities.
Form Recognizer easily identifies, extracts, and analyzes the following document data:
- Table structure and content.
- Form elements and field values.
- Typed and handwritten alphanumeric text.
- Relationships between elements.
- Key/value pairs
- Element location with bounding box coordinates.
Form Recognizer features and development options
The following features are supported by Form Recognizer v2.1. Use the links in the table to learn more about each feature and browse the API references.
| Feature | Description | Development options |
|---|---|---|
| Layout API | Extraction and analysis of text, selection marks, and table structures, along with their bounding box coordinates, from forms and documents. | |
| Custom model | Extraction and analysis of data from forms and documents specific to distinct business data and use cases. | |
| Invoice model | Automated data processing and extraction of key information from sales invoices. | |
| Receipt model | Automated data processing and extraction of key information from sales receipts. | |
| ID document model | Automated data processing and extraction of key information from US driver's licenses and international passports. | |
| Business card model | Automated data processing and extraction of key information from business cards. |
Which Form Recognizer feature should I use?
This section helps you decide which Form Recognizer feature you should use for your application.
| What type of document do you want to analyze? | How is the document formatted? | Your best solution |
|---|---|---|
|
Is your invoice, receipt, or business card document composed of English-text? |
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Is your ID document a US driver's license or an international passport? |
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Is your form or document an industry-standard format commonly used in your business or industry? |
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How to use Form Recognizer documentation
This documentation contains the following article types:
- Concepts provide in-depth explanations of the service functionality and features.
- Quickstarts are getting-started instructions to guide you through making requests to the service.
- How-to guides contain instructions for using the service in more specific or customized ways.
- Tutorials are longer guides that show you how to use the service as a component in broader business solutions.
Data privacy and security
As with all the cognitive services, developers using the Form Recognizer service should be aware of Microsoft policies on customer data. See our Data, privacy, and security for Form Recognizer page.
Next steps
- Try our Sample Labeling online tool
- Follow our client library / REST API quickstart to get started extracting data from your documents. We recommend that you use the free service when you're learning the technology. Remember that the number of free pages is limited to 500 per month.
- Explore the REST API reference documentation to learn more.
- If you're familiar with a previous version of the API, see the What's new article to learn of recent changes.