# apache/tika

The Apache Tika toolkit detects and extracts metadata and text from over a thousand different file types (such as PPT, XLS, and PDF).

Repository: https://github.com/apache/tika
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/tika
Homepage: https://tika.apache.org/
Language: Java
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: java, tika, metadata, extraction, content
Last push: 2026-08-26T22:14:35+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 77/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 6314, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 4011, forks 958 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:32.282441+00:00)

## What it is
Apache Tika is a Java toolkit that detects file types and extracts text and metadata from over a thousand file formats (PDF, Office documents, etc.) through a single interface. It ships as an embeddable Java library, a CLI jar, a REST server, and a gRPC service, with 4.x adding Markdown output for LLM/RAG pipelines and crash-isolated forked parsing.

## Use cases
- extract text from pdfs and office documents
- detect the real file type of an uploaded file
- index documents into elasticsearch or solr for search
- convert documents to markdown for LLM and RAG pipelines
- batch parse a directory of files with fault tolerance
- run a document parsing microservice over HTTP or gRPC
- extract metadata and embedded content from files

## When to choose
- you need one API to parse many heterogeneous file formats
- you are building search indexing or content analysis pipelines
- you want LLM/RAG-ready Markdown extraction from documents
- you need robust parsing of untrusted files with process isolation

## When to avoid
- you only need PDF parsing with fine-grained layout control (dedicated PDF libraries fit better)
- you cannot run Java 17 or a JVM in your environment
- you need lightweight, single-format extraction with minimal dependencies

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: parser, ocr, nlp, search-engine, etl, cli, http-server, rpc
- domain: files, pdf, developer-tools, large-language-models
- platform: jvm, cli, self-hosted, cross-platform
- tags: content-extraction, metadata-extraction, file-type-detection, markdown-output, rag-pipelines, document-parsing, tika-server, grpc, process-isolation, apache-project, search, natural-language-processing, data-engineering, docker

## Member repositories
- apache/tika (main) score 77

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:32.282441+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 2026-08-29T18:24:01.629658+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/apache/tika (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:32.282441+00:00, sha e88a9963825f)
  - homepage: https://tika.apache.org/ (fetched 2026-08-29T09:17:08.272918+00:00, sha 7457e316c9a8)
  - site_page: https://tika.apache.org/docs/4.0.x/index.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:17:08.283036+00:00, sha 48b480381673)
  - site_page: https://tika.apache.org/docs/4.0.x/migration-to-4x/index.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:17:08.285257+00:00, sha 524acdda9711)
  - site_page: https://tika.apache.org/docs/4.0.x/using-tika/index.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:17:08.287448+00:00, sha 2ec47ffa7b4d)
  - site_page: https://tika.apache.org/docs/4.0.x/using-tika/java-api/getting-started.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:17:08.289317+00:00, sha dc665d330b3d)
  - site_page: https://tika.apache.org/docs/4.0.x/pipes/index.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:17:08.291548+00:00, sha 8d2303641644)
  - site_page: https://tika.apache.org/docs/4.0.x/configuration/index.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:17:08.293306+00:00, sha e937cd81d073)
  - site_page: https://tika.apache.org/4.0.0/api (fetched 2026-08-29T09:17:08.295121+00:00, sha 7278e24bd399)
  - site_page: https://tika.apache.org/3.3.2/api (fetched 2026-08-29T09:17:08.296932+00:00, sha 4747addd7bce)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.