Unstract - LLM-powered ETL platform for unstructured data

What is Unstract

Every enterprise today faces the same frustrating reality: your teams are buried under piles of PDFs, scanned forms, and handwritten documents. Traditional OCR tools extract text, sure, but they can't understand what that text means. Your employees spend hours manually typing data from invoices, contracts, and claims forms—hours that could be spent on work that actually moves the business forward.

This is exactly the problem Unstract was built to solve.

Unstract is a 100% open-source ETL platform powered by large language models. It transforms unstructured documents into clean, structured data—whether that's JSON, XML, or your preferred format. The key difference? Unstract doesn't just read text; it understands context, layout, and semantic meaning. That means it can handle complex document structures, handwritten notes, and multi-language content that would leave traditional OCR tools stumping.

What makes Unstract particularly powerful is its no-code visual interface. You don't need a team of machine learning engineers to build document extraction workflows. Whether you're a data engineer, a business analyst, or part of a digital transformation team, you can create sophisticated document processing pipelines in hours—not weeks.

The platform has earned the trust of Fortune 500 companies across industries. From Accenture and Citi to Boeing and ExxonMobil, organizations handling sensitive financial, legal, and healthcare documents rely on Unstract daily. On G2, users rate Unstract 4.4 out of 5 stars, with LLMWhisperer (Unstract's document preprocessing engine) scoring an impressive 4.6 out of 5.

Unstract's Core Features

Building effective document extraction workflows shouldn't require a PhD in machine learning. Unstract gives you a suite of powerful tools that work together to handle everything from simple invoices to complex multi-page contracts.

Prompt Studio is your visual playground for prompt engineering. Instead of writing code, you drag and drop components to build extraction prompts. You can compare how different LLMs respond to the same document side by side, monitor costs in real-time as you refine your prompts, and maintain version history so you can always roll back to a previous version. Many teams use Prompt Studio to rapidly prototype extraction patterns and then deploy them to production within the same day.

Before any LLM can process a document, it needs to be in the right format. That's where LLMWhisperer comes in—this preprocessing engine transforms messy PDFs, scans, and images into clean, LLM-readable content. It preserves layout, detects handwritten text, identifies checkboxes and radio buttons, and handles documents in over 300 languages. Whether you're processing a handwritten tax form or a multi-column legal contract, LLMWhisperer prepares it for optimal extraction.

Even the best LLMs can occasionally hallucinate—seeing patterns that aren't there or missing information. LLMChallenge addresses this head-on by running two LLMs in parallel: an extractor and a challenger. Results are only returned when both models agree. If they disagree, the system returns NULL rather than potentially incorrect data. This consensus mechanism is why Unstract achieves 99.9% extraction accuracy for enterprise customers who can't afford errors.

For high-volume document processing, SinglePass Extraction lets you combine multiple extraction prompts into a single optimized request. Instead of making five separate API calls to extract five different fields, you make one. The results are striking: up to 7x reduction in token costs and 80% lower latency. This is particularly powerful for standardized documents like invoices, claims forms, and application documents.

When you're dealing with lengthy documents—50 pages or more—Summarized Extraction first generates a document summary, then extracts only the relevant information based on that context. This approach maintains 100% of the original document's context while reducing token consumption by up to 7x. You get the accuracy of full-document analysis at a fraction of the cost.

Finally, Human in the Loop ensures that edge cases don't fall through the cracks. You can configure review workflows where suspicious or low-confidence results are flagged for human inspection. A built-in correction interface lets reviewers fix errors quickly, and those corrections can even improve future automated processing.

Who Uses Unstract

Unstract serves teams across industries who share a common challenge: extracting reliable data from messy, unstructured documents at scale. Here's how different organizations put the platform to work.

Insurance claims processing teams deal with a bewildering variety of document formats—loss reports, medical records, repair estimates, police reports. Manual review is slow and error-prone, leading to frustrated customers and inflated costs. Unstract automatically extracts policy details, injury assessments, claim amounts, and coverage information from these varied documents. The result? Claims that once took days to process now move through in hours, with 90% of the workflow fully automated.

Financial services firms performing KYC (Know Your Customer) verification need to process stacks of identity documents, proof of address, and financial statements during client onboarding. This traditionally meant hours of manual data entry and verification. Unstract extracts and validates customer information automatically, dramatically speeding up the onboarding process while reducing the manual intervention required. Compliance teams can focus on exception handling rather than data entry.

Healthcare organizations face a particular challenge: clinical documents are notoriously unstructured, with varying formats, abbreviations, and handwriting. Combining LLMWhisperer's preprocessing with Unstract's extraction capabilities dramatically reduces the time staff spend manually cleaning and entering data. The result is cleaner data for analytics, faster processing, and less frustration for clinical staff.

Accounts payable teams processing hundreds or thousands of invoices daily know the pain of dealing with dozens of different formats from different vendors. Using Prompt Studio to build extraction prompts and SinglePass to process multiple fields at once, teams automate 90% of their invoice processing workflow. Staff shift from data entry to analyzing exceptions and building vendor relationships.

Banking operations teams need to analyze statements from hundreds of different financial institutions—each with its own unique format. Traditional solutions required custom development for each new bank format, sometimes taking two days per format. With Unstract, the LLM understands new formats without training, reducing processing time from two days to just minutes.

Technical Features and Architecture

Under the hood, Unstract is built for flexibility and enterprise-grade reliability. Understanding the technical foundation helps you see why the platform performs the way it does.

Multi-LLM support is central to Unstract's architecture. The platform integrates with OpenAI GPT models, Anthropic's Claude, Google Gemini, Azure OpenAI, and many others. This means you're not locked into a single provider—you can choose models based on cost, performance, speed, or specific capabilities for different document types. Many customers run hybrid setups, using faster models for high-volume processing and more capable models for complex edge cases.

Vector database and embedding model flexibility lets you build knowledge bases that enhance extraction accuracy. Unstract supports multiple vector databases and embedding models, so you can leverage your existing infrastructure or choose based on your specific requirements for retrieval accuracy and speed.

The platform's MCP Server support (Model Context Protocol) extends its capabilities even further, allowing integration with a broader ecosystem of AI tools and workflows.

For teams already using n8n for workflow automation, Unstract provides native integration, enabling seamless connections between document processing and your existing automation stack.

Deployment flexibility means you can run Unstract in the cloud for easier management or self-host on your own infrastructure for maximum data control. Both options deliver the same powerful capabilities—the choice depends on your compliance requirements and operational preferences.

When it comes to security, Unstract doesn't compromise. The platform holds SOC 2 Type II certification, ISO 27001 certification, and is compliant with GDPR and HIPAA. For organizations in regulated industries, this means you can confidently process sensitive financial, healthcare, or legal documents knowing the platform meets rigorous security standards.

Performance metrics tell the real story: Unstract achieves 90% straight-through processing, meaning 90% of documents pass through without any human intervention. This translates to 80% reduction in manual involvement compared to traditional approaches. Processing speed varies by mode—Native Text processing is very fast, while High Quality mode (necessary for complex scans and handwriting) operates at medium speed.

Unstract's Pricing

Unstract offers transparent pricing designed to scale with your document processing needs. Here's the complete breakdown.

Unstract Cloud Pricing

Key details: All plans include LLMWhisperer. Annual billing comes with 2 months free (approximately 17% discount). You'll need to provide your own LLM, Vector DB, and Embedding Model API keys. The Enterprise plan supports self-hosted deployment for organizations requiring on-premises infrastructure.

Who should choose what: The Starter plan is ideal for teams processing up to 5,000 pages monthly—perfect for pilots and small-scale production use. The Growth plan suits organizations scaling document processing across departments or handling 25,000+ pages monthly. Enterprise is designed for organizations with strict data residency or compliance requirements requiring self-hosted deployment.

LLMWhisperer Standalone Pricing

LLMWhisperer is also available as an independent service for teams that need document preprocessing without the full Unstract platform.

Free tier: LLMWhisperer offers a free tier of 100 pages per day—no credit card required. New Unstract users also receive $10 in free credits (Azure OpenAI GPT-4o) to get started.

Which Plan is Right for You?

If you're evaluating Unstract for the first time, start with the 14-day free trial at unstract.com/start-for-free—no credit card needed. This gives you full access to explore Prompt Studio, LLMWhisperer, and all features before committing.

For teams with high-volume processing needs, the annual billing option provides meaningful savings while locking in your rate. If you anticipate needing more than 25,000 pages monthly, the Enterprise plan offers custom pricing with dedicated support and self-hosted deployment options.

Frequently Asked Questions