Estimate your OCR costs

You can use the OCR cost estimator tool (preview) to estimate your optical character recognition (OCR) scanning costs.

Tip

If you're not an E5 customer, use the 90-day Microsoft Purview solutions trial to explore how additional Purview capabilities can help your organization manage data security and compliance needs. Start now at the Microsoft Purview trials hub. Learn details about signing up and trial terms.

Prerequisites

To enable the OCR cost estimator tool on Endpoint, you must first install the latest Windows Update released on February 29, 2024 or later.

Estimate your bill

To estimate your bill, follow these instructions:

Select the appropriate tab for the portal you're using. Depending on your Microsoft 365 plan, the Microsoft Purview compliance portal is retired or will be retired soon.

To learn more about the Microsoft Purview portal, see Microsoft Purview portal. To learn more about the Compliance portal, see Microsoft Purview compliance portal.

Microsoft Purview portal

1. Sign in to the Microsoft Purview portal.
2. Select Settings.
3. Select Optical character recognition (OCR)
4. Under Estimate the cost of an OCR scan for free, select Try for free.
5. In the flyout pane, select the locations where the files you want to scan are found and then choose Run estimation.
6. After Estimation started successfully displays in the flyout pane, select View estimation next to Predict OCR cost estimate for free to view the Estimation page.
7. To enable OCR scans from the Estimation page, select Turn on OCR in the flyout pane and then follow the steps to configure your OCR settings.

Compliance portal

1. Open Microsoft Purview compliance portal.
2. Select Settings in the left-side navigation pane.
3. Select Optical character recognition (OCR)
4. Under Estimate the cost of an OCR scan for free, select Try for free.
5. In the flyout pane, select the locations where the files you want to scan are found and then choose Run estimation.
6. After Estimation started successfully displays in the flyout pane, select View estimation next to Predict OCR cost estimate for free to view the Estimation page.
7. To enable OCR scans from the Estimation page, select Turn on OCR in the flyout pane and then follow the steps to configure your OCR settings.

Note

Running an OCR estimation can take around 24 hours to complete the first time. After that the dashboard is refreshed daily and can be viewed anytime.

Edit the scope of your estimate

1. On the Estimation page, select Edit scope from the dropdown menu next to Enable OCR.
2. In the flyout pane, edit the locations with files that you wish to scan and then select Restart estimation.

Download your estimate

1. On the Estimation page, select Download Report from the dropdown menu next to Enable OCR.
2. In the flyout pane, select Download all, or select the individual reports you want to download.

Cancel an in progress estimate

1. On the Estimation page, Select Stop estimation from the dropdown menu next to Enable OCR.
2. On the next page, confirm your choice.

Limitations

• OCR and OCR Cost Estimator can't run at the same time.
• In Exchange and Teams, there is the ability to cache small images, such as logos or email signatures, without being charged.
• Estimation of images in pdf files is supported in Exchange and Teams. Estimation of images in pdf files isn't supported in SharePoint and OneDrive.
• For Endpoint, each pdf file is estimated to have an image count of 4. This is the current average with OCR customers.
• Downloaded reports show the To Date in the Estimation Timeframe column as the date of latest scan (current date in case of ongoing scan) for all the rows in the report.
• All incoming emails and Teams messages from outside the organization are estimated if the scope is set to "ALL" when configuring OCR Cost Estimator for Exchange and Teams.
• All dashboards are reset when you restart estimation. Use the download report of the scan history before restarting an estimation. Even with the same location and scope, estimation can be restarted from scratch.