LlamaParse
Document extractionA hosted parsing service tuned for extracting clean structure from complex, messy PDFs.
LlamaParse is the document-parsing service from the LlamaIndex team. It targets the hard cases — dense tables, multi-column layouts, scanned and mixed-content PDFs — and returns clean Markdown or structured output suited to retrieval.
Being hosted, it trades self-hosting for accuracy and zero setup, and it slots straight into LlamaIndex pipelines.
Where it's ideally used
Best when parsing accuracy on genuinely difficult PDFs matters more than keeping the parsing step in-house.
Where it doesn't fit
Ruled out when documents cannot leave your environment — a hosted API is a non-starter for strict data residency.