Datalab Chandra OCR
Shares rank 10 of 11 OCR models by recommenders
People recommend Chandra for its accuracy on text and handwriting, and it is open-weight. Critics note weak layout bounding boxes, slow runtime, and restrictive license terms.
People recommend Chandra for its accuracy on text and handwriting, and it is open-weight. Critics note weak layout bounding boxes, slow runtime, and restrictive license terms.
6 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 83%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Accurate on text and handwriting
“Chandra is even more accurate on text but its layout bounding boxes are worse and it runs very slowly”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Can I Run AI locally?” “our new model, chandra, saturates handwriting-heavy benchmarks like this one”
Comment from 18 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Pulse (YC S24) – Production-grade unstructured document extraction”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Weak layout bounding boxes
“Chandra is even more accurate on text but its layout bounding boxes are worse and it runs very slowly”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Can I Run AI locally?” “otherwise-great OCR models (like Chandra) have terrible bounding boxes”
Comment from 11 May 2026 on Hacker News Runs very slowly
“Chandra is even more accurate on text but its layout bounding boxes are worse and it runs very slowly”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Can I Run AI locally?” Restrictive license constraints
“which is larger and has bad license constraints”
Comment from 11 Feb 2026 in “GLM-OCR: Accurate × Fast × Comprehensive”
Other OCR models people recommend
The four most recommended other OCR models, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mistral OCR | 69 | 40 | 63% | 12 | — | — |
| PaddleOCR | 19 | 4 | 83% | 8 | — | Approved |
| GLM-OCR | 16 | 4 | 80% | 7 | — | Approved |
| DeepSeek-OCR | 12 | 4 | 75% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Datalab Chandra OCRThis page | 5 | 1 | 83% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
All 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“parse complex layouts, tables, handwriting, and formulas at a fraction of the cost of Claude/Gemini”
“otherwise-great OCR models (like Chandra) have terrible bounding boxes”
“vLLM gave me enormous throughput improvements on big documents via continuous batching”
“Chandra is even more accurate on text but its layout bounding boxes are worse and it runs very slowly”
“which is larger and has bad license constraints”
“it doesn't follow what I consider to be a fundamental OCR rule”
“happy to help you all get setup”
“our new model, chandra, saturates handwriting-heavy benchmarks like this one”
“trains open-weight, state-of-the-art models for document intelligence”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.