MDisBetter vs Marker — Online Tool vs Open-Source Library
Marker is excellent open-source software — fast, accurate, locally-runnable. MDisBetter is a hosted service. The choice between them is rarely about output quality (both are good) and almost always about whether you want to operate the conversion infrastructure yourself.
| Feature | MDisBetter | Marker |
|---|---|---|
| Cost — small / personal use | Free | Free (run yourself) |
| Cost — at scale (100k pages/mo) | ~$80/mo Pro | GPU server + ops time |
| Setup time | 0 — paste a URL | Python + GPU + model download |
| Runs locally / private data | Enterprise tier (BAA) | Yes |
| OCR for scanned PDFs | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tables | ✓ | ✓ |
| Equations as LaTeX | ✓ | ✓ |
| Updates / bug fixes | Pushed continuously | Pull when you remember |
| Hosted API | ✓ | Build it yourself |
Frequently asked questions
When should I pick Marker over MDisBetter?
Three cases: (1) data so sensitive it cannot leave your network even with a BAA, (2) volume so large that GPU economics beat per-page pricing, (3) you need to fork the model and customise behaviour. For everything else, the operational overhead of running Marker yourself dwarfs the cost of using a hosted service.
Are Marker and MDisBetter equally accurate?
On standard digital PDFs, both produce comparable Markdown. Marker has a slight edge on equations (specialised math model). MDisBetter has a slight edge on multi-column reading order and table reconstruction. The differences matter most on edge-case documents.
How fast is Marker compared to MDisBetter's API?
Marker on a modern GPU: ~0.5–2s per page. MDisBetter API: ~0.3–1s per page (network round-trip included). At single-document scale, the difference is invisible. At thousands of documents, MDisBetter scales horizontally without you provisioning hardware.
Does Marker handle OCR?
Yes — Marker includes Surya OCR for scanned PDFs, with quality comparable to commercial OCR engines. MDisBetter's OCR runs server-side on equivalent models. Output quality is similar; setup effort is the differentiator.
Can I use both — Marker for sensitive, MDisBetter for everything else?
Absolutely — and several customers do. Run Marker locally for the small subset of documents that can't leave your network; use MDisBetter's API for the rest. Your downstream code consumes Markdown either way and doesn't care which engine produced it.