# firecrawl/pdf-inspector

Fast Rust library for PDF inspection, classification, and text extraction. Intelligently detects scanned vs text-based PDFs to enable smart routing decisions.

Repository: https://github.com/firecrawl/pdf-inspector
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/pdf-inspector
Homepage: https://firecrawl.github.io/pdf-inspector/
Language: Rust
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: markdown, nodejs, pdf, pdf-extraction, pdf-parser, python, rust, text-extraction, ocr-routing, pdf-classification
Last push: 2026-08-21T23:46:04+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 81/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 98, release rhythm 98, longevity 14
- inputs: {"age_days": 208, "days_push": 12, "days_rel": 16, "gap_med": 2.5, "n_releases_24m": 3}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 16751, forks 1159 (observed 2026-08-28T04:11:17.103903+00:00)

## What it is
A fast Rust library for PDF inspection, classification, and text extraction that detects whether PDFs are text-based or scanned to enable smart OCR routing. It converts native-text PDFs to clean Markdown with position-aware extraction, table detection, and multi-column layout support, with bindings for Python, Node.js, CLI, and browser WebAssembly.

## Use cases
- convert pdfs to markdown
- detect scanned vs text-based pdfs
- extract text from pdf files
- route pdfs to ocr only when needed
- extract tables from pdf documents
- parse multi-column pdf layouts
- run pdf parsing in the browser

## When to choose
- you need fast classification and extraction of native-text PDFs without OCR overhead
- you want Markdown output with tables, headings, and reading-order reconstruction
- you need bindings across Rust, Python, Node.js, CLI, and WebAssembly
- you want to skip expensive OCR services for text-based PDFs

## When to avoid
- your PDFs are primarily scanned images requiring full-document OCR
- you need model-based PDF parsing or visual layout understanding beyond heuristics
- you need form field extraction or PDF editing/manipulation

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: parser, pdf, ocr, markdown, nlp
- domain: pdf, files, developer-tools
- platform: rust, python, cli, wasm, browser, cross-platform
- tags: pdf-classification, text-extraction, ocr-routing, pdf-to-markdown, scanned-pdf-detection, table-detection, multi-column-layout, firecrawl, natural-language-processing, nodejs

## Member repositories
- firecrawl/pdf-inspector (main) score 81

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:17.103903+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:04:45.971295+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/firecrawl/pdf-inspector (fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:17.103903+00:00, sha 3249b79029e4)
  - homepage: https://firecrawl.github.io/pdf-inspector/ (fetched 2026-08-29T08:01:53.563798+00:00, sha 71398f560c05)
  - registry_crates: https://crates.io/api/v1/crates/pdf-inspector (fetched 2026-08-29T08:01:53.566550+00:00, sha 77107c3648f4)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.