Unstructured
by Unstructured-IOPre-processing library for AI pipelines — extract text and tables from PDFs, Word, HTML, EML and 25+ other formats.
About Unstructured
Unstructured is a Python open-source data extraction project by Unstructured-IO. Pre-processing library for AI pipelines — extract text and tables from PDFs, Word, HTML, EML and 25+ other formats. With 9,000 GitHub stars and 0forks, it's one of the Data Extraction tools worth knowing. You can download the source, browse it on GitHub, or read the full setup guide in the README below.
README
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<a href="https://github.com/Unstructured-IO/unstructured/blob/main/LICENSE.md">[image: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/unstructured/]</a> <a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi/unstructured/">[image: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/unstructured/]</a> <a href="https://GitHub.com/unstructured-io/unstructured/graphs/contributors">[image: https://GitHub.com/unstructured-io/unstructured.js/graphs/contributors]</a> <a href="https://github.com/Unstructured-IO/unstructured/blob/main/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md">[image: code_of_conduct.md] </a> <a href="https://GitHub.com/unstructured-io/unstructured/releases">[image: https://GitHub.com/unstructured-io/unstructured.js/releases]</a> <a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi/unstructured/">[image: https://github.com/Naereen/badges/]</a> [[image: Downloads]](https://pepy.tech/project/unstructured) [[image: Downloads]](https://pepy.tech/project/unstructured) <a href="https://www.phorm.ai/query?projectId=34efc517-2201-4376-af43-40c4b9da3dc5"> <img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Phorm-Ask_AI-%23F2777A.svg?&logo=data:image/svg+xml;base64,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" /> </a>
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<div> <p align="center"> <a href="https://short.unstructured.io/pzw05l7"> <img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/JOIN US ON SLACK-4A154B?style=for-the-badge&logo=slack&logoColor=white" /> </a> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/unstructuredio/"> <img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/LinkedIn-0077B5?style=for-the-badge&logo=linkedin&logoColor=white" /> </a> </div>
Open-Source Pre-Processing Tools for Unstructured Data
The unstructured library provides open-source components for ingesting and pre-processing images and text documents, such as PDFs, HTML, Word docs, and many more. The use cases of unstructured revolve around streamlining and optimizing the data processing workflow for LLMs. unstructured modular functions and connectors form a cohesive system that simplifies data ingestion and pre-processing, making it adaptable to different platforms and efficient in transforming unstructured data into structured outputs.
Unstructured Transform MCP — Document Processing for your Agents
Unstructured Transform brings production-grade document processing to your agents as an MCP server. It gives them the ability to turn 60+ file types into structured data that's ready for your applications, vector databases, and any downstream processes by parsing, enriching, chunking, and embedding files directly inside their current session.
Setup Steps for Your Agent
- Pick your MCP client. Transform works with virtually any MCP-compatible host or agent framework — Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI and more.
- Add the Transform MCP server to your client's MCP configuration (via the CLI
mcp addcommand or the client's MCP settings/config file, depending on the tool).
- Authenticate once when your client prompts you. Sign in, and the Transform tools become available to your agent on its next message.
- Point your agent at a file. Drag and drop or reference a local file or URL. Transform handles 60+ formats (PDFs, emails, images, scanned files, and more).
- Describe what you need in plain language. Tell the agent your intent (e.g. "parse and chunk this contract for a vector store") and Transform partitions, enriches, chunks, and embeds the file, returning structured data ready to use.
15,000 free pages a month, 3 cents per page after!
📄 Full docs: https://docs.unstructured.io/transform/overview
Unstructured Pipelines
Ready to move your data processing pipeline to production, and take advantage of advanced features? Check out Unstructured Pipelines. In addition to better processing performance, take advantage of chunking, embedding, and image and table enrichment generation, all from a low code UI or an API. Request a demo from our sales team to learn more about how to get started.
:eight_pointed_black_star: Quick Start
There are several ways to use the unstructured library: <ul><li><a href="https://github.com/Unstructured-IO/unstructured#run-the-library-in-a-container" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Run the library in a container</a> or</li><li>Install the library</li></ul> 1. Install from PyPI 2. Install for local development <ul><li>For installation with <code>conda</code> on Windows system, please refer to the <a href="https://unstructured-io.github.io/unstructured/installing.html#installation-with-conda-on-windows" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">documentation</a></li></ul>
Run the library in a container
The following instructions are intended to help you get up and running using Docker to interact with unstructured. See here if you don't already have docker installed on your machine.
NOTE: we build multi-platform images to support both x86_64 and Apple silicon hardware. docker pull should download the corresponding image for your architecture, but you can specify with --platform (e.g. --platform linux/amd64) if needed.
We build Docker images for all pushes to main. We tag each image with the corresponding short commit hash (e.g. fbc7a69) and the application version (e.g. 0.5.5-dev1). We also tag the most recent image with latest. To leverage this, docker pull from our image repository.
docker pull downloads.unstructured.io/unstructured-io/unstructured:latest
Once pulled, you can create a container from this image and shell to it.
# create the container
docker run -dt --name unstructured downloads.unstructured.io/unstructured-io/unstructured:latest
# this will drop you into a bash shell where the Docker image is running
docker exec -it unstructured bash
You can also build your own Docker image. Note that the base image is wolfi-base, which is updated regularly. If you are building the image locally, it is possible docker-build could fail due to upstream changes in wolfi-base.
If you only plan on parsing one type of data you can speed up building the image by commenting out some of the packages/requirements necessary for other data types. See Dockerfile to know which lines are necessary for your use case.
make docker-build
# this will drop you into a bash shell where the Docker image is running
make docker-start-bash
Once in the running container, you can try things directly in Python interpreter's interactive mode.
# this will drop you into a python console so you can run the below partition functions
python3
>>> from unstructured.partition.pdf import partition_pdf
>>> elements = partition_pdf(filename="example-docs/layout-parser-paper-fast.pdf")
>>> from unstructured.partition.text import partition_text
>>> elements = partition_text(filename="example-docs/fake-text.txt")
Installing the library
Use the following instructions to get up and running with `unstructured` and test your installation.- Install the Python SDK to support all document types with
pip install "unstructured[all-docs]"
- Install the following system dependencies if they are not already available on your system.
- For suggestions on how to install on the Windows and to learn about dependencies for other features, see the
At this point, you should be able to run the following code:
from unstructured.partition.auto import partition
elements = partition(filename="example-docs/eml/fake-email.eml")
print("\n\n".join([str(el) for el in elements]))
Installation Instructions for Local Development
The following instructions are intended to help you get up and running with unstructured locally if you are planning to contribute to the project.
This project uses uv for dependency management. Install it first:
# macOS / Linux
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
Then install all dependencies (base, extras, dev, test, and lint groups):
make install
This runs uv sync --locked --all-extras --all-groups, which creates a virtual environment and installs everything in one step. No need to manually create or activate a virtualenv.
To install only specific document-type extras:
uv sync --extra pdf
uv sync --extra csv --extra docx
To update the lock file after changing dependencies in pyproject.toml:
make lock
- Optional:
Additionally, if you're planning to contribute to unstructured, we provide you an optional pre-commit configuration file to ensure your code matches the formatting and linting standards used in unstructured. If you'd prefer not to have code changes auto-tidied before every commit, you can use make check to see whether any linting or formatting changes should be applied, and make tidy to apply them.
If using the optional pre-commit, you'll just need to install the hooks with pre-commit install since the pre-commit package is installed as part of make install mentioned above. Finally, if you decided to use pre-commit you can also uninstall the hooks with pre-commit uninstall.
In addition to develop in your local OS we also provide a helper to use docker providing a development environment:
make docker-start-dev
This starts a docker container with your local repo mounted to /mnt/local_unstructured. This docker image allows you to develop without worrying about your OS's compatibility with the repo and its dependencies.
:clap: Quick Tour
Documentation
For more comprehensive documentation, visit https://docs.unstructured.io . You can also learn more about our other products on the documentation page, including our SaaS API.Here are a few pages from the Open Source documentation page that are helpful for new users to review:
PDF Document Parsing Example
The following examples show how to get started with the `unstructured` library. The easiest way to parse a document in unstructured is to use the `partition` function. If you use `partition` function, `unstructured` will detect the file type and route it to the appropriate file-specific partitioning function. If you are using the `partition` function, you may need to install additional dependencies per doc type. For example, to install docx dependencies you need to run `pip install "unstructured[docx]"`. See our [installation guide](https://docs.unstructured.io/open-source/installation/full-installation) for more details.from unstructured.partition.auto import partition
elements = partition("example-docs/layout-parser-paper.pdf")
Run print("\n\n".join([str(el) for el in elements])) to get a string representation of the output, which looks like:
LayoutParser : A Unified Toolkit for Deep Learning Based Document Image Analysis
Zejiang Shen 1 ( (cid:0) ), Ruochen Zhang 2 , Melissa Dell 3 , Benjamin Charles Germain Lee 4 , Jacob Carlson 3 , and
Weining Li 5
Abstract. Recent advances in document image analysis (DIA) have been primarily driven by the application of neural
networks. Ideally, research outcomes could be easily deployed in production and extended for further investigation.
However, various factors like loosely organized codebases and sophisticated model configurations complicate the easy
reuse of important innovations by a wide audience. Though there have been ongoing efforts to improve reusability and
simplify deep learning (DL) model development in disciplines like natural language processing and computer vision, none
of them are optimized for challenges in the domain of DIA. This represents a major gap in the existing toolkit, as DIA
is central to academic research across a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. This paper
introduces LayoutParser, an open-source library for streamlining the usage of DL in DIA research and applications.
The core LayoutParser library comes with a set of simple and intuitive interfaces for applying and customizing DL models
for layout detection, character recognition, and many other document processing tasks. To promote extensibility,
LayoutParser also incorporates a community platform for sharing both pre-trained models and full document digitization
pipelines. We demonstrate that LayoutParser is helpful for both lightweight and large-scale digitization pipelines in
real-word use cases. The library is publicly available at https://layout-parser.github.io
Keywords: Document Image Analysis · Deep Learning · Layout Analysis · Character Recognition · Open Source library ·
Toolkit.
Introduction
Deep Learning(DL)-based approaches are the state-of-the-art for a wide range of document image analysis (DIA) tasks
including document image classification [11,
See the partitioning section in our documentation for a full list of options and instructions on how to use file-specific partitioning functions.
:guardsman: Security Policy
See our security policy for information on how to report security vulnerabilities.
:bug: Reporting Bugs
Encountered a bug? Please create a new GitHub issue and use our bug report template to describe the problem. To help us diagnose the issue, use the python scripts/collect_env.py command to gather your system's environment information and include it in your report. Your assistance helps us continuously improve our software - thank you!
:books: Learn more
| Section | Description | |-|-| | Company Website | Unstructured.io product and company info | | Documentation | Full API documentation | | Batch Processing | Ingesting batches of documents through Unstructured |
:chart_with_upwards_trend: Analytics
Telemetry is off by default. To opt in, set UNSTRUCTURED_TELEMETRY_ENABLED=true (or =1) before importing unstructured. To opt out, set DO_NOT_TRACK or SCARF_NO_ANALYTICS to any non-empty value (e.g. true, 1, yes, false, 0—any non-empty string opts out); opt-out takes precedence. Unset the variable or leave it empty if you do not want to opt out. See our Privacy Policy.
Unstructured — FAQ
What is Unstructured?
Pre-processing library for AI pipelines — extract text and tables from PDFs, Word, HTML, EML and 25+ other formats.
Is Unstructured free to use?
Yes. Unstructured is open-source and free. You can browse the source on GitHub or download it here at no cost — no signup required.
How do I install and run Unstructured?
Download the latest source as a ZIP from GitHub (or clone the main branch), then follow the setup steps in the README below.
What language is Unstructured written in?
Unstructured is primarily written in Python.
How popular is Unstructured?
Unstructured has 9,000 stars and 0 forks on GitHub — a useful signal of how actively it's maintained and trusted by developers.