Receipt OCR

OCR accuracy depends mostly on the photo. Lay the receipt flat on a dark, plain surface, in even light without shadows or glare, and fill the frame with the receipt. Hold the phone straight above it rather than at an angle. Long receipts can be photographed in two halves and read separately. Thermal receipts fade over time, so scan important ones soon after you get them.

After the text is read, the tool looks for patterns. The shop is usually the first line with words; dates and times are recognised in common formats; the total is taken from a line with words like Total, Amount due or To pay, and if none is found, from the largest amount on the receipt. Subtotal and tax lines (VAT, GST, sales tax) are recognised too, and the remaining lines with a price become items, with quantities like 2 x when present. Payment lines such as card, cash and change are not counted as items.

OCR is good but not perfect: a 5 can be read as an S, and faded receipts lose characters. Always compare the total, date and tax with the receipt before submitting an expense claim — that's why every value is an editable field. You can also edit the recognised text in the box below and the details are found again. The CSV includes a summary block and then one row per item.

Fill in business expense reports, track household spending in a spreadsheet, keep records of purchases for tax returns or warranties, split bills with friends, or collect the data of many receipts into one sheet by downloading a CSV for each and combining them. For general text from any picture, use Image to Text; for multi-page scanned documents, use PDF OCR.

The photo is read on your device. The reading engine and the chosen language file are downloaded once from this site the first time you use them and then work from your browser's cache. No image, text or amount is sent anywhere.