AWS Textract vs Google Vision Pricing for Invoice OCR: Cost Per 1,000 Pages

Short answer: for plain OCR, AWS Textract and Google Cloud Vision cost the same, $1.50 per 1,000 pages. Textract drops to $0.60 after 1 million pages a month and Vision only after 5 million, while Vision gives 1,000 free pages every month forever. For invoices the gap is large: Textract Analyze Expense returns invoice fields and line items for $10 per 1,000 pages, and Google Vision returns no fields at all. Google's field extractor, the Document AI Invoice Parser, costs about $100 per 1,000 single-page invoices.

Teams usually compare these two because they already run on one of the clouds and want to know whether the other is cheaper for accounts payable. The honest answer depends on one question: do you need text, or do you need an invoice? This article prices both jobs at real US AP volumes, using each vendor's published rate card. You can drop one of your own invoices into the tool at the top of this page to see what a finished extraction looks like while you read.

How AWS Textract and Google Vision charge

Both bill per page with no subscription. The difference is in what a "page" buys.

Google Cloud Vision bills per feature, per image. Each page of a PDF or TIFF counts as one image, and each feature you request on that page is one unit. OCR comes in two features, Text Detection and Document Text Detection, both at the same price. The first 1,000 units of each feature are free every month.

AWS Textract bills per page, per API. Detect Document Text is the plain OCR call. Analyze Expense is the API built for invoices and receipts, and it returns typed fields such as vendor name, invoice number, due date, subtotal, tax and total, plus line-item groups. New AWS accounts get a three-month free tier: 1,000 pages a month of Detect Document Text and 100 pages a month of Analyze Expense.

AWS Textract vs Google Vision pricing, side by side

The full Google rate card, including the non-OCR features, is on our Google Cloud Vision API pricing page, and every Textract feature from Layout to Forms plus Custom Queries is broken down on the Amazon Textract pricing page.

Is Google Vision cheaper than AWS Textract?

Only at the edges. Below 1 million pages a month the two cost the same $1.50 per 1,000 for text, and Vision is ahead by the value of its 1,000 free monthly pages, which is $1.50. Between 1 million and 5 million pages Textract is cheaper, because its rate has already dropped to $0.60 while Vision still charges $1.50. At 3 million pages a month Textract costs $2,700 and Vision $4,498.50, about $1,800 a month in Textract's favor.

For invoices the comparison flips hard toward AWS, because Vision cannot produce invoice fields. You pay $1.50 for text and then either build the parser yourself or add a second product.

What 5,000 invoices a month actually cost on each

Take a mid-sized US AP team processing 5,000 single-page vendor invoices a month and wanting the header plus line items.

If you only compare the first two rows, Google looks cheaper. If you compare the two rows that actually produce an invoice, AWS is ten times cheaper, because Google bills the Invoice Parser per document in 10-page blocks and a one-page invoice pays for the whole block. We walk through that block rounding in more detail in AWS Textract vs Google Document AI pricing.

Which is more accurate for invoices?

For raw text both are mature and read clean printed invoices well. The accuracy question that matters to AP is field and line-item accuracy, and there Vision has nothing to measure because it does not extract fields. In BusinesswareTech's January 2025 test on scanned invoices, AWS Textract scored 78% on header fields and 82% on line items, and Google Document AI scored 82% on fields but only 40% on line items. So Google's own field extractor was the weaker of the two on the part of the invoice that takes AP clerks the longest to type.

If you plan to send Vision text into a language model to find the fields, accuracy becomes a property of your prompt, your validation and your review step, not of Vision.

What you build on top of either one

Neither API is an AP workflow. On AWS you store files in S3, start asynchronous jobs for PDFs, poll or subscribe for results, and map the ExpenseDocument JSON to your columns. On Google you create a Cloud Storage bucket, use a service account (API keys are not accepted for async file requests), run asyncBatchAnnotate, read JSON output files back from the bucket, and then write the logic that turns a page of words into vendor, date, total and a line-item table.

After that, both routes still need duplicate detection, a review screen for low-confidence values, and an export into QuickBooks, NetSuite, Xero or a spreadsheet. For most finance teams that work costs far more than the API bill in either column above. If invoices are only one of many document types flowing through your company, such as contracts, bills of lading and claims, a broader enterprise document extraction platform can be a better fit than wiring each cloud API by hand.

Which one should a US AP team choose?

• Choose Google Cloud Vision if you need page text for search, archiving or your own model, you already run on Google Cloud, and you process fewer than 1 million pages a month.
• Choose AWS Textract if you need invoice fields from an API. Analyze Expense at $10 per 1,000 pages is the cheapest field-level invoice API of the big three clouds, and it includes line items.
• Choose neither if the goal is simply to get vendor invoices into your books without a development project. An invoice data extraction API or a finished upload tool gives you the fields and the export without building the pipeline.

Frequently asked questions

Is AWS Textract better than Google Vision?

For invoices, yes. Textract has Analyze Expense, which returns invoice header fields and line items for $10 per 1,000 pages. Google Vision returns only text, so you have to build field extraction yourself or pay for Document AI. For plain OCR the two are priced the same and both read printed text well.

Does Google Vision have an equivalent to Textract Analyze Expense?

Not inside Vision. Google's equivalent is a separate product, the Document AI Invoice Parser, priced at $0.10 per document of up to 10 pages. On single-page invoices that works out to $100 per 1,000, ten times the Textract Analyze Expense rate.

Which is cheaper for 1 million pages of OCR a month?

Almost identical. At 1 million pages Textract Detect Document Text costs $1,500 and Google Vision costs $1,498.50 after its 1,000 free units. Above 1 million Textract drops to $0.60 per 1,000, so it gets cheaper faster until Vision's own break at 5 million pages.

Is there a way to avoid building on either API?

Yes. InvoiceExtractor reads the invoice header and every line item and exports Excel, CSV or JSON with no AWS or Google Cloud account. Plans start at $49 a month, or $24 a month billed yearly, for 2,500 pages. Upload an invoice at the top of this page to check the output on your own documents.