Use Cases

The most common use of the API is turning documents that were never designed to be machine-readable — scanned papers, textbooks, standards, patents, lab reports — into structured Mathpix Markdown, DOCX, LaTeX, HTML, or PPTX, with the math, tables, and chemistry preserved rather than flattened into image blobs or mangled text.

This is what v3/pdf is for. Line-level JSON output makes it possible to build reading and annotation experiences on top of the original page rather than replacing it.

Teams preparing technical literature for retrieval or model training run whole archives through the Files API — up to 200,000 documents per job, read from and written back to their own cloud storage. STEM content is where generic text extraction fails hardest, because an equation rendered as ? or a table collapsed into a paragraph silently destroys the meaning of the page.

Because the API emits real markup rather than a picture of markup, converted documents can be read by screen readers, re-flowed on small screens, and rendered as MathML or LaTeX for assistive technology. Institutions use this to remediate back-catalogs of course material that were only ever available as scans.

Mathway is a popular homework help app that uses Mathpix OCR API to provide step by step solutions for students stuck on homework problems:

Mathpix OCR API powers apps like Doubtnut to create intelligent camera applications. The app queries Mathpix OCR API to obtain text from user submitted images. This text is then used to search databases of curated content, allow users to find educational content they are looking for by simply taking a picture of a homework problem.

The API powers our very own Mathpix Snip app, used by top students all over the world to save time creating LaTeX documents. Mathpix Snip converts user’s screenshots to LaTeX code, which can then be pasted into any LaTeX compatible text editor.

Gradescope and RM results use Mathpix OCR API to group together identical student answers for handwritten exams, saving teachers and professors countless hours grading assignments.