🔥 zai-org/GLM-OCR
GLM-OCR: Accurate × Fast × Comprehensive — Trending on GitHub today with 237 new stars.
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Model Introduction
GLM-OCR is a multimodal OCR model for complex document understanding, built on the GLM-V encoder–decoder architecture. It introduces Multi-Token Prediction (MTP) loss and stable full-task reinforcement learning to improve training efficiency, recognition accuracy, and generalization. The model integrates the CogViT visual encoder pre-trained on large-scale image–text data, a lightweight cross-modal connector with efficient token downsampling, and a GLM-0.5B language decoder. Combined with a two-stage pipeline of layout analysis and parallel recognition based on PP-DocLayout-V3, GLM-OCR delivers robust and high-quality OCR performance across diverse document layouts.
Key Features
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State-of-the-Art Performance: Achieves a score of 94.62 on OmniDocBench V1.5, ranking #1 overall, and delivers state-of-the-art results across major document understanding benchmarks, including formula recognition, table recognition, and information extraction.
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Optimized for Real-World Scenarios: Designed and optimized for practical business use cases, maintaining robust performance on complex tables, code-heavy documents, seals, and other challenging real-world layouts.
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Efficient Inference: With only 0.9B parameters, GLM-OCR supports deployment via vLLM, SGLang, and Ollama, significantly reducing inference latency and compute cost, making it ideal for high-concurrency services and edge deployments.
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Easy to Use: Fully open-sourced and equipped with a comprehensive SDK and inference toolchain, offering simple installation, one-line invocation, and smooth integration into existing production pipelines.
News & Updates
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[2026.3.12] GLM-OCR SDK now supports agent-friendly Skill mode — just pip install glmocr + set API key, ready to use via CLI or Python with no GPU or YAML config needed. See: GLM-OCR Skill
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[2026.3.12] GLM-OCR Technical Report is now available. See: GLM-OCR Technical Report
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[2026.2.12] Fine-tuning tutorial based on LLaMA-Factory is now available. See: GLM-OCR Fine-tuning Guide
Download Model
Model Download Links Precision
GLM-OCR 🤗 Hugging Face 🤖 ModelScope BF16
GLM-OCR SDK
We provide an SDK for using GLM-OCR more efficiently and conveniently.
Install SDK
Choose the lightest installation that matches your scenario:
# Cloud / MaaS + local images / PDFs (fastest install) pip install glmocr# Cloud / MaaS + local images / PDFs (fastest install) pip install glmocrSelf-hosted pipeline (layout detection)
pip install "glmocr[selfhosted]"
Flask service support
pip install "glmocr[server]"`
Install from source for development:
# Install from source git clone https://github.com/zai-org/glm-ocr.git cd glm-ocr uv venv --python 3.12 --seed && source .venv/bin/activate uv pip install -e .# Install from source git clone https://github.com/zai-org/glm-ocr.git cd glm-ocr uv venv --python 3.12 --seed && source .venv/bin/activate uv pip install -e .Model Deployment
Two ways to use GLM-OCR:
Option 1: Zhipu MaaS API (Recommended for Quick Start)
Use the hosted cloud API – no GPU needed. The cloud service runs the complete GLM-OCR pipeline internally, so the SDK simply forwards your request and returns the result.
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Get an API key from https://open.bigmodel.cn
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Configure config.yaml:
pipeline: maas: enabled: true # Enable MaaS mode api_key: your-api-key # Requiredpipeline: maas: enabled: true # Enable MaaS mode api_key: your-api-key # RequiredThat's it! When maas.enabled=true, the SDK acts as a thin wrapper that:
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Forwards your documents to the Zhipu cloud API
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Returns the results directly (Markdown + JSON layout details)
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No local processing, no GPU required
Input note (MaaS): the upstream API accepts file as a URL or a data:;base64,... data URI. If you have raw base64 without the data: prefix, wrap it as a data URI (recommended). The SDK will auto-wrap local file paths / bytes / raw base64 into a data URI when calling MaaS.
API documentation: https://docs.bigmodel.cn/cn/guide/models/vlm/glm-ocr
Option 2: Self-host with vLLM / SGLang
Deploy the GLM-OCR model locally for full control. The SDK provides the complete pipeline: layout detection, parallel region OCR, and result formatting.
Install the self-hosted extra first:
pip install "glmocr[selfhosted]"
Using vLLM
Install vLLM:
docker pull vllm/vllm-openai:nightly
Or using with pip:
pip install -U "vllm>=0.17.0"
Launch the service:
pip install "transformers>=5.3.0"
vllm serve zai-org/GLM-OCR --allowed-local-media-path / --port 8080 --speculative-config '{"method": "mtp", "num_speculative_tokens": 1}' --served-model-name glm-ocr`
Using SGLang
Install SGLang:
docker pull lmsysorg/sglang:dev
Or using with pip:
pip install "sglang>=0.5.9"
Launch the service:
pip install "transformers>=5.3.0"
sglang serve --model zai-org/GLM-OCR --port 8080 --speculative-algorithm NEXTN --speculative-num-steps 3 --speculative-eagle-topk 1 --speculative-num-draft-tokens 4 --served-model-name glm-ocr`
Update Configuration
After launching the service, configure config.yaml:
pipeline: maas: enabled: false # Disable MaaS mode (default) ocr_api: api_host: localhost # or your vLLM/SGLang server address api_port: 8080pipeline: maas: enabled: false # Disable MaaS mode (default) ocr_api: api_host: localhost # or your vLLM/SGLang server address api_port: 8080Option 3: Ollama/MLX
For specialized deployment scenarios, see the detailed guides:
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Apple Silicon with mlx-vlm - Optimized for Apple Silicon Macs
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Ollama Deployment - Simple local deployment with Ollama
SDK Usage Guide
CLI
# Parse a single image glmocr parse examples/source/code.png# Parse a single image glmocr parse examples/source/code.pngParse a directory
glmocr parse examples/source/
Set output directory
glmocr parse examples/source/code.png --output ./results/
Use a custom config
glmocr parse examples/source/code.png --config my_config.yaml
Enable debug logging with profiling
glmocr parse examples/source/code.png --log-level DEBUG
Run layout detection on CPU (keep GPU free for OCR model)
glmocr parse examples/source/code.png --layout-device cpu
Run layout detection on a specific GPU
glmocr parse examples/source/code.png --layout-device cuda:1
Override any config value via --set (dotted path, repeatable)
glmocr parse examples/source/code.png --set pipeline.ocr_api.api_port 8080 glmocr parse examples/source/ --set pipeline.layout.use_polygon true --set logging.level DEBUG`
Python API
from glmocr import GlmOcr, parse
Simple function
result = parse("image.png") result = parse(["img1.png", "img2.jpg"]) result = parse("https://example.com/image.png") result.save(output_dir="./results")
Note: a list is treated as pages of a single document.
Class-based API
with GlmOcr() as parser: result = parser.parse("image.png") print(result.json_result) result.save()
Place layout model on CPU (useful when GPU is reserved for OCR)
with GlmOcr(layout_device="cpu") as parser: result = parser.parse("image.png")
Place layout model on a specific GPU
with GlmOcr(layout_device="cuda:1") as parser: result = parser.parse("image.png")`
Flask Service
Install the optional server dependency first:
pip install "glmocr[server]"
# Start service python -m glmocr.server# Start service python -m glmocr.serverWith debug logging
python -m glmocr.server --log-level DEBUG
Call API
curl -X POST http://localhost:5002/glmocr/parse
-H "Content-Type: application/json"
-d '{"images": ["./example/source/code.png"]}'`
Semantics:
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images can be a string or a list.
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A list is treated as pages of a single document.
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For multiple independent documents, call the endpoint multiple times (one document per request).
Configuration
Configuration priority (highest to lowest):
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CLI --set overrides
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Python API keyword arguments
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GLMOCR_* environment variables / .env file
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YAML config file
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Built-in defaults*_
Full configuration in glmocr/config.yaml:
# Server (for glmocr.server) server: host: "0.0.0.0" port: 5002 debug: false# Server (for glmocr.server) server: host: "0.0.0.0" port: 5002 debug: falseLogging
logging: level: INFO # DEBUG enables profiling
Pipeline
pipeline:
OCR API connection
ocr_api: api_host: localhost api_port: 8080 api_key: null # or set API_KEY env var connect_timeout: 30 request_timeout: 120
Page loader settings
page_loader: max_tokens: 8192 temperature: 0.0 image_format: JPEG min_pixels: 12544 max_pixels: 71372800
Result formatting
result_formatter: output_format: both # json, markdown, or both
Layout model device placement
layout:
device: null # null=auto, "cpu", "cuda", or "cuda:N"`
See config.yaml for all options.
Output Formats
Here are two examples of output formats:
- JSON
[[{ "index": 0, "label": "text", "content": "...", "bbox_2d": null }]]
- Markdown
# Document Title
Body...
| Table | Content |
|---|---|
| ... | ... |
Example of full pipeline
you can run example code like:
python examples/example.py
Output structure (one folder per input):
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result.json – structured OCR result
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result.md – Markdown result
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imgs/ – cropped image regions (when layout mode is enabled)
Modular Architecture
GLM-OCR uses composable modules for easy customization:
Component Description
PageLoader
Preprocessing and image encoding
OCRClient
Calls the GLM-OCR model service
PPDocLayoutDetector
PP-DocLayout layout detection
ResultFormatter
Post-processing, outputs JSON/Markdown
You can extend the behavior by creating custom pipelines:
from glmocr.dataloader import PageLoader from glmocr.ocr_client import OCRClient from glmocr.postprocess import ResultFormatterfrom glmocr.dataloader import PageLoader from glmocr.ocr_client import OCRClient from glmocr.postprocess import ResultFormatterclass MyPipeline: def init(self, config): self.page_loader = PageLoader(config) self.ocr_client = OCRClient(config) self.formatter = ResultFormatter(config)
def process(self, request_data):
Implement your own processing logic
pass`
Star History
Acknowledgement
This project is inspired by the excellent work of the following projects and communities:
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PP-DocLayout-V3
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PaddleOCR
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MinerU
License
The Code of this repo is under Apache License 2.0.
The GLM-OCR model is released under the MIT License.
The complete OCR pipeline integrates PP-DocLayoutV3 for document layout analysis, which is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Users should comply with both licenses when using this project.
Citation
If you find GLM-OCR useful in your research, please cite our technical report:
@misc{duan2026glmocrtechnicalreport, title={GLM-OCR Technical Report}, author={Shuaiqi Duan and Yadong Xue and Weihan Wang and Zhe Su and Huan Liu and Sheng Yang and Guobing Gan and Guo Wang and Zihan Wang and Shengdong Yan and Dexin Jin and Yuxuan Zhang and Guohong Wen and Yanfeng Wang and Yutao Zhang and Xiaohan Zhang and Wenyi Hong and Yukuo Cen and Da Yin and Bin Chen and Wenmeng Yu and Xiaotao Gu and Jie Tang}, year={2026}, eprint={2603.10910}, archivePrefix={arXiv}, primaryClass={cs.CL}, url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.10910}, }@misc{duan2026glmocrtechnicalreport, title={GLM-OCR Technical Report}, author={Shuaiqi Duan and Yadong Xue and Weihan Wang and Zhe Su and Huan Liu and Sheng Yang and Guobing Gan and Guo Wang and Zihan Wang and Shengdong Yan and Dexin Jin and Yuxuan Zhang and Guohong Wen and Yanfeng Wang and Yutao Zhang and Xiaohan Zhang and Wenyi Hong and Yukuo Cen and Da Yin and Bin Chen and Wenmeng Yu and Xiaotao Gu and Jie Tang}, year={2026}, eprint={2603.10910}, archivePrefix={arXiv}, primaryClass={cs.CL}, url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.10910}, }Sign in to highlight and annotate this article

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