Docling

Docling is an open-source AI document processing framework developed by IBM that enables developers to convert, extract, and structure information from PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, HTML files, scanned documents, and other formats for Large Language Model (LLM) applications. It transforms complex documents into clean, structured, and AI-ready content while preserving document layout, tables, images, formulas, and metadata. The framework is designed for AI developers, data scientists, researchers, enterprises, and organizations building Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, document intelligence platforms, enterprise search engines, and AI knowledge bases. By simplifying document ingestion, Docling helps developers prepare high-quality data for AI applications with minimal effort.

The platform automatically parses documents, extracts structured text, recognizes tables, identifies page layouts, processes images, and converts files into formats optimized for AI workflows. Developers can efficiently prepare business documents, research papers, technical manuals, contracts, and reports for semantic search and intelligent retrieval. Docling supports AI document parsing, OCR, table extraction, layout analysis, Markdown conversion, JSON export, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), developer APIs, and seamless integration with LangChain, LlamaIndex, Haystack, OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, Hugging Face, and other AI ecosystems. Its modular architecture enables developers to customize document processing pipelines while supporting both local and enterprise deployments.

Docling helps organizations transform unstructured documents into structured knowledge that can be searched, analyzed, and utilized by AI systems with greater accuracy. Whether building enterprise knowledge assistants, legal document analysis platforms, financial intelligence systems, scientific research tools, or AI-powered search applications, developers can process large document collections efficiently and reliably. Its open-source architecture, IBM-backed development, and enterprise-grade performance make Docling an excellent choice for modern document AI workflows. And the best part? Docling is 100% Free and Open Source, allowing developers to download, customize, and self-host the framework without licensing fees. Users only pay for optional cloud infrastructure or AI models they choose to integrate.