Compare various software that extract tables from PDF documents. Find out the best PDF to table tool that meets your needs. PDF to CSV converter - https://nanonets.com/convert-pdf-to-csv PDF to Excel converter - https://nanonets.com/tools/pdf-to-excel This is an excerpt from an in-depth article on this topic: https://nanonets.com/blog/extract-tables-from-pdf/ You can also read it here: https://medium.com/nanonets/extract-tables-from-pdf-b8f7d7392b7d

1. PDF Table Extraction
How to Extract Tables from PDF?

2. 2
Problem Statement
Ever tried extracting data from PDFs? It can be extremely tedious and
time-consuming!
While you could still extract text from PDFs by copy-pasting (prone to
formatting errors), extracting tables from a PDF is way more complicated &
cumbersome!
Business workflows today largely involve the exchange of PDF
documents(financial documents such as invoices, receipts, reports etc.). And
most data-rich business documents present complex information in tables.

3. 3
How To Extract Tabular Data
Here are some of the most popular solutions to extract data from PDFs to
tables:
● Online PDF to Excel converters
● Tabula
● Camelot or Excalibur
● PDFTables
● Docparser
● Nanonets

4. 4
Online PDF to Excel converters
Pros:
● Simple drag-and-drop
interface.
Cons:
● Can’t handle PDF files with complex
table structures.
● Doesn’t support batch processing.
● Sometimes characters or numbers aren’t
identified correctly.
● Limited use.
● Not an automated process.
● Can’t be customized.

5. 5
Tabula
Pros:
● Tabula works
wonderfully on PDF files
that are predominantly
text-based.
● It is easy to use, robust
and can be embedded
into other software.
Cons:
● Tabula can’t handle scanned images or
documents.
● Can’t handle multi-line or merged cells.
● Doesn’t support batch processing.
● Sometimes characters or numbers aren’t
identified correctly.
● Can’t support OCR requirements.
● Not an automated process.

6. 6
Camelot or Excalibur
Pros:
● Auto detects tables.
● Works great on text-based PDF files.
● Flexible & customizable to a large
extent.
● Exports tables to multiple formats like
CSV, Excel, JSON, HTML & Sqlite.
● Bad tables can be automatically
discarded.
● Each table can be converted to a
pandas DataFrame.
Cons:
● Camelot only works on text-based PDFs, not
scanned images or documents.
● Can’t handle complex PDF documents with
multi-line tables and merged cells.
● When using Stream, the whole page is treated
as a single table. This affects the output when
there are multiple tables on the same page.
● Can’t support OCR requirements.
● Not an automated process.

7. 7
PDFTables
Pros:
● Works across small and large data
sets.
● Automated table extraction.
● Exports tables to multiple formats like
CSV, Excel, JSON, & XML.
● Free for up to 25 pages.
● Handles multiple files at the same
time.
Cons:
● Can’t tweak or customize the table extraction
algorithm.
● Doesn't perform Optical Character Recognition
OCR.
● Complete reliance on the underlying algorithm
for accuracy and performance.
● Doesn’t support any cloud integration.

8. 8
Docparser
Pros:
● Supports batch processing of
multiple documents.
● Built-in OCR.
● Allows custom parsing rules.
● Exports tables to multiple formats
like CSV, Excel, JSON, & XML.
● Supports some neat integration
options.
Cons:
● Parsing rules can get complicated.
● You need to define the coordinates and boundaries
for each table.
● Runs on a template identification model.
● Can’t automatically handle new document types &
formats.
● Might require separate parsing rules for data that
come in different regions.
● Only works accurately on documents with fixed
region formatting or known templates.
● Might require some level of verification and rework.

9. 9
Nanonets
Pros:
● Cognitive data & table extraction with OCR.
● High accuracy. Easy to use and set up.
● Automatically detects tables including structured
row-column information within its response.
● Processes documents 10x faster than other software.
● Supports batch processing of multiple documents.
● Exports tables to multiple formats (CSV, Excel,JSON.
● Seamless 2-way integration with multiple accounting
software. Almost no post-processing required.
● Works with non-English or multiple languages
● Wide choice of integration options
Cons:
● Can’t handle very high volume
spikes!
● Only offers 100 document/credits
for free per month.

10. 10
Learn more about extracting
tables from PDF here:
https://nanonets.com/blog/extract-tables-f
rom-pdf/