browser-ocr-mcp

MCP server for local OCR via Tesseract.js. Extract text from images and browser screenshots without sending image data to the LLM.

Why

When browsing with Playwright MCP, you often encounter pages where text is embedded in images. Normally you'd send the screenshot to the LLM — slow, bandwidth-heavy. This server runs Tesseract.js locally so the image never leaves your machine.

Related MCP server: vision-mcp

Tools

ocr_image

Extract text from an image file or URL. Zero browser setup required.

Input:

• path (string, optional) — Absolute path to a local image file

• url (string, optional) — HTTP URL to download the image from

Output:

{
  "text": "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog",
  "confidence": 85,
  "wordCount": 9
}

Typical workflow with Playwright MCP:

1. browser_take_screenshot({ filename: "page.png" })
2. ocr_image({ path: "/home/user/page.png" })
3. → text returned, zero image data sent to LLM

browser_ocr

Take a screenshot of the current browser page via CDP and OCR it — all in one call. Requires a shared Chromium instance.

Input:

• fullPage (boolean, optional) — Capture full scrollable page. Default: false

Setup (one-time):

# Terminal 1: Launch Chromium with debugging port
chromium --remote-debugging-port=9222

# Terminal 2: Start Playwright MCP connected to it
npx @playwright/mcp --cdp-endpoint http://localhost:9222

# Terminal 3: Start OCR MCP server
node server.js --cdp-endpoint http://localhost:9222

Install

git clone https://github.com/Ismapik/browser-ocr-mcp.git
cd browser-ocr-mcp
npm install

The first time you run OCR, Tesseract.js downloads English language data (~12 MB). Subsequent runs use the cached data.

MCP Client Config

Add to your MCP client configuration (e.g., mcp.json or Claude Desktop config):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "browser-ocr": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/browser-ocr-mcp/server.js"],
      "env": {
        "CDP_ENDPOINT": "http://localhost:9222"
      }
    }
  }
}

The CDP_ENDPOINT env var is only needed if you use the browser_ocr tool. The ocr_image tool works without it.

Test

npm test

Runs a test suite that:

1. Starts the MCP server

2. Calls ocr_image on a sample image

3. Verifies text extraction, confidence, and word count

4. Tests error handling for missing/invalid inputs

Requirements

• Node.js ≥ 18

• Chromium (only for browser_ocr tool)

• playwright-core (optional, only for browser_ocr)

License

MIT