Master Amazon Textract with our step-by-step tutorial, detailed feature walkthrough, and expert tips.
Explore the key features that make Amazon Textract powerful for document processing workflows.
Multiple extraction APIs tuned for different document types: basic OCR (DetectDocumentText), structured analysis (AnalyzeDocument for tables and forms), and domain-specific models (AnalyzeExpense, AnalyzeID, AnalyzeLending). Each mode is priced separately so you pay only for the extraction depth you need.
An accounts payable team uses AnalyzeExpense at $0.01/page for invoices requiring vendor and line-item extraction, while using basic OCR at $0.0015/page for general correspondence that only needs text content.
Identifies table boundaries, rows, columns, merged cells, and cell relationships. Preserves the spatial structure of tables as structured data rather than flattening them into unstructured text.
A financial analyst extracts quarterly earnings tables from PDF reports. Textract preserves row-column relationships, merged header cells, and numeric formatting so the data imports directly into spreadsheets without manual cleanup.
Extracts handwritten text alongside printed content with high accuracy. Works on forms, notes, annotations, and signatures common in healthcare, legal, and government documents.
A healthcare system digitizes patient intake forms where doctors write notes in the margins. Textract extracts both the printed form fields and handwritten annotations into structured data.
Processes multi-page documents up to 3,000 pages as background jobs. Documents are uploaded to S3, processing runs asynchronously, and completion notifications arrive via SNS. Handles variable workloads without provisioning infrastructure.
A law firm uploads 500-page contracts to S3. Textract processes them in the background and triggers a Lambda function via SNS when extraction completes, adding results to a searchable DynamoDB index.
Textract offers better AWS integration and competitive pricing for basic OCR ($0.0015/page vs Azure's $0.001/page for read). Azure wins on custom model training (Textract has none) and complex table extraction accuracy. Choose based on your cloud provider. If you're on AWS, Textract integrates natively. If you need custom models for unusual document formats, Azure is the better choice.
New AWS customers get 3 months of free usage: 1,000 pages/month for basic OCR (DetectDocumentText), and 100 pages/month each for AnalyzeDocument, AnalyzeExpense, and AnalyzeID APIs. After the free tier expires, you pay per-page at standard rates.
Yes. Textract recognizes handwritten text alongside printed content. It works on filled forms, margin notes, and annotations. Accuracy varies by handwriting legibility, but it handles typical business documents well. This is a significant advantage over many competitors that only handle printed text.
Costs drop significantly at scale. Basic OCR falls from $0.0015 to $0.0006/page above 1M pages/month. Table extraction drops from $0.015 to $0.01/page. For a company processing 500,000 invoice pages monthly using AnalyzeExpense ($0.01/page), the monthly cost would be approximately $5,000.
Now that you know how to use Amazon Textract, it's time to put this knowledge into practice.
Sign up and follow the tutorial steps
Check pros, cons, and user feedback
See how it stacks against alternatives
Follow our tutorial and master this powerful document processing tool in minutes.
Tutorial updated March 2026