Azure AI Document Intelligence

Azure AI Document Intelligence (formerly Form Recognizer) is Microsoft's cloud API for reading documents. The Read model handles OCR including handwriting at $1.50 per 1,000 pages; Layout and prebuilt models (invoices, receipts, IDs, business cards, health insurance cards, US tax documents, contracts) cost $10 per 1,000 pages; custom extraction and classification run $30 per 1,000 pages. A free F0 tier covers 500 pages a month, and high-volume commitment tiers cut prebuilt pricing roughly in half. Every field comes back with a confidence score, and Microsoft states submitted documents are not used to train its models, with results stored about 24 hours for async retrieval. It is a natural pick for Microsoft-heavy shops: it plugs into Power Automate AI Builder, Azure Functions, and the broader Azure stack. The main gap is that prebuilt model coverage is narrower than what custom business documents need, and custom models at $30 per 1,000 pages add up at scale.

1. Create a Document Intelligence resource in the Azure portal.
2. Call a prebuilt model (Read, Layout, Invoice, ID) or train a custom model on labeled samples.
3. Send documents via REST API or SDK and parse the JSON response.
4. Feed structured data into Power Automate, Logic Apps, or your application.