FastOCR MCP server

OCR any scanned PDF or image from Claude, Cursor and other MCP clients, in 100+ languages. fastocr.org · Docs · Get an API key

An MCP server for the FastOCR Document OCR API. It lets Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor and other MCP clients OCR a local scanned PDF or image and get back its text or a searchable PDF.

• PDF files up to 1 GiB, and PNG, JPG, JPEG, GIF, WebP and BMP images up to 20 MiB; 100+ languages.
• Built on the official fastocr-sdk and the official MCP Python SDK. Runs locally over stdio; your files go only to the FastOCR API.

A real scanned page and the first lines of the text FastOCR returned for it, unedited.

API reference and guides: https://fastocr.org/docs

Get an API key

Any signed-in FastOCR account can create an API key and start right away.

1. Sign in and create an API key in the developer console. You accept the API terms with your first key.
2. Set the key as FASTOCR_API_KEY in your MCP client config (see below).
3. When you need more than the free pages, buy a prepaid API page pack by card in the developer console.

Each account gets 50 free document pages per month.

Install

With uv there is nothing to install; MCP clients run it with uvx fastocr-mcp. Or install it with pip and run fastocr-mcp:

pip install fastocr-mcp

Python 3.10 or newer. The server reads the key from FASTOCR_API_KEY.

Configure your MCP client

Claude Code

claude mcp add fastocr -e FASTOCR_API_KEY=your_api_key -- uvx fastocr-mcp

Claude Desktop

Add this to claude_desktop_config.json (Settings > Developer > Edit Config), then restart Claude Desktop:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fastocr": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["fastocr-mcp"],
      "env": { "FASTOCR_API_KEY": "your_api_key" }
    }
  }
}

Cursor

Add the same block to ~/.cursor/mcp.json (all projects) or .cursor/mcp.json (one project):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fastocr": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["fastocr-mcp"],
      "env": { "FASTOCR_API_KEY": "your_api_key" }
    }
  }
}

If you installed with pip, use "command": "fastocr-mcp" and "args": [].

Tools

Try asking: "OCR ~/Downloads/scanned-contract.pdf and summarize the termination clause", "Read the text in /Users/me/Desktop/receipt.jpg" or "Make a searchable copy of /Users/me/archive/1998-letters.pdf".

Every processed page uses one page of the account's API allowance; an image is one page. A document that runs out of pages fails with buy_pages; the tool says so and links to the developer console.

Errors

Tool errors are written for the agent to act on: a rejected key, an account out of pages (buy_pages), too many documents processing at once (concurrency_limit), a missing file, or an unsupported file type. Each message says what to do next. Error codes are listed in the API docs.

Configuration

Links

• Docs: https://fastocr.org/docs
• API keys and page packs: https://fastocr.org/developers/keys
• Python SDK: https://github.com/fastocr-org/fastocr-python
• Support: support@fastocr.org

License

MIT