OCR ID card

POST /api/ocr-prep-id-card10 quota units per call · cache hits free

Pre-process a passport, drivers licence, or other ID card photo: detect the card edges, crop, deskew, and normalise lighting for clean OCR.

Specialised pre-processing for photos of identity documents — passports, driving licences, national IDs, library cards. The pipeline detects the card outline, crops to its bounds, corrects perspective so the card is rectangular, and normalises lighting so the resulting image is OCR-friendly. Glare patches and shadows are reduced where possible. Output is a clean rectangular PNG ready for `document-ocr`. Pair the two for an end-to-end ID-photo → text pipeline.

Inputs

Name	Type	Default	Description
image*	file	—	Photo of an ID card / passport / driver's license.
granularity	enum (text \| word \| line \| word+line)	"text"	OCR detail level.
returnPrepImage	boolean	false	Return the prep'd PNG as base64.

Response

Modes: json. Cache: yes (24h TTL).

Every response carries x-cache (HIT / MISS / BYPASS), x-cache-signature (stable across identical inputs), and the rate-limit headers listed below.

Quota & limits

Cost per call	10 units against the 10,000-unit monthly quota. Cache hits are free — only cache misses decrement.
Burst limit	200 requests per rolling minute, shared across all tools.
Max request size	`25 MiB` (base64 inflates file payloads ~33% — the limit applies to the decoded bytes).
Max response size	`30 MiB`
Timeout	90s wall clock.
Rate-limit headers	`X-RateLimit-Limit`, `X-RateLimit-Remaining`, `X-RateLimit-Burst-Limit` on every response; `X-Quota-Warning` once 80% of the monthly quota is spent; `Retry-After` on 429s.

Errors

Errors are JSON with an error string; schema failures add a details object (Zod's flattened field errors).

Status	When	Body
400	Input fails the tool's schema (wrong type, missing required field, malformed base64) or the file bytes can't be parsed as the expected format.	{ "error": "invalid inputs", "details": { "fieldErrors": { … } } }
401	Missing or invalid X-Api-Key / X-Account-Id headers (or no session when called from the browser).	{ "error": "unauthorized" }
404	Unknown tool id, or calling /api/* on the website hostname instead of api.xtract.bot.	{ "error": "not found" }
413	Request body over the tool's max request size, or an image header declaring more megapixels than the tool's pixel budget.	{ "error": "…exceeds maxRequestBytes…" }
415	Content-Type isn't application/json on the json-body transport.	{ "error": "unsupported content-type; expected application/json" }
429	Monthly quota or the 200/min burst limit exhausted. Check Retry-After and the X-RateLimit-* headers.	{ "error": "monthly quota exceeded", "monthRemaining": 0, … }
5xx	Conversion engine failure. Safe to retry; if it persists, the input is hitting a bug — please report it.	{ "error": "…" }

Code samples

Built from the sample example.

# Download or substitute the example input:
#   curl -O https://xtract.bot/examples/ocr-fixtures/document-small.png
IMAGE=$(base64 -w0 < document-small.png)

curl -X POST https://api.xtract.bot/api/ocr-prep-id-card \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  -H "X-Account-Id: $XTRACT_ACCOUNT_ID" \
  -H "X-Api-Key: $XTRACT_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
  "image": "'"$IMAGE"'"
}'