Extend vs Pulse AI
Two dedicated extraction platforms with real free tiers. Extend was nine points more accurate, far better on single pages, scans, and handwriting, and it publishes a clear per-page price. Pulse AI was better on Chinese and Japanese scans and slightly better on multi-page statements, returned nothing on several ordinary files, and doesn't publish what a page costs. Extend is the safer choice for most corpora.
Both are API-first extraction platforms with a pipeline builder, webhooks, and SDKs, and both let you start on a free tier without a card. They came fourth and seventh. The difference is consistency.
Extend led on single-page documents by a wide margin, on scans, photos, and handwriting by a wider one, where only DocuPipe did better, and on Hebrew and Arabic layouts, where Pulse was the weakest system in the test. Pulse led on Chinese and Japanese scans, where it was among the better systems, and edged Extend on multi-page statements. On long registers both were poor, Pulse slightly less so. Pulse's worst results fell on easy documents, a purchase order, an invoice, a structured export, each returned empty while Extend read them near perfectly.
On resilience Extend has one mode and nothing to tune, with a silent cliff on long documents and one odd miss on an export file. Pulse's ranked result needed its top model tier with extended reasoning, and its empties fell on files with no pattern. Extend's failures you can predict. Pulse's you can't.
On price Extend is about six cents a page pay-as-you-go with 10,000 free credits and no minimum, five cents on its $500 Scale plan, all published. Pulse gives 20,000 free credits and $0.015 per credit after, but doesn't publish credits per page, and everything beyond the free plan is custom. Pulse's free tier is bigger. Extend's paid price is knowable.
On product both are strong. Extend's free tier includes Studio, an evaluation suite for regression-testing extraction, workflows, run and request logs, a review agent, webhooks with delivery logs, a test environment, and SDKs in four languages. Pulse Platform assembles pipelines from classify, extract, schema, tables, charts, and split steps with saved presets and bounding-box results, with webhooks, async jobs, batch endpoints, and ten seats on the free tier, and SDKs in Python and TypeScript. On compliance Pulse states more: SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR, with self-hosting on Enterprise. Extend sells a HIPAA BAA as an add-on and doesn't state SOC 2 on its pricing page. On retention Extend offers zero and custom policies. Pulse sets them up through support.
So Extend for most corpora, and certainly for scanner-fed, single-page, or Hebrew and Arabic work. Pulse for Chinese and Japanese material, after a free-tier trial confirms your files come back and you have a per-page price in writing.
Single-page, scanned, or handwritten documents, Hebrew and Arabic layouts, and teams that want evaluation tooling and a published price.
Chinese and Japanese material, or a regulated buyer who wants the fuller compliance page, after a free-tier trial and a per-page quote.
How it scores, area by area
The accuracy score comes from the benchmark. Every other score is ours, with the reason written next to it. We use the same weights on every review and comparison.
| Area | Extend | Pulse AI |
|---|---|---|
| Accuracy35% of total | 8.0Ranked 4th of 8 systems on the benchmark. | 7.1Ranked 7th of 8 systems on the benchmark. |
| Resilience15% of total | 5.0One mode and no tuning, but a hard cliff on long documents and one odd miss on a plain export file, all silent. | 3.0Ordinary one-page files came back empty with no pattern to predict it, and the ranked result needed the top model tier with extended reasoning turned on. |
| Price15% of total | 7.0About $0.06 per page pay-as-you-go, $0.05 on the $500 Scale plan, no minimum, and a generous free tier. | 5.0$0.015 per credit, but credits per page are not published, so the cost of a page is unknown. |
| Getting started10% of total | 9.0Studio, evaluation suite, workflows and a test environment on a free tier of 10,000 credits with no card; schemas are authored by hand in Studio. | 7.0Platform UI with ten seats and 20,000 free credits; everything past that is custom pricing. |
| API and integration10% of total | 9.0Webhooks with delivery logs, five APIs, four SDKs, request logs and a test environment, all on the free tier. | 8.0Webhooks on the free tier, Python and TypeScript SDKs, async and batch endpoints. |
| Data control7.5% of total | 7.0Zero and custom retention policies offered; custom agreements on Scale. | 6.0Retention configured by contacting support; zero retention and regional residency on Pro. |
| Compliance7.5% of total | 5.0HIPAA BAA is a paid add-on; SOC 2 not stated on the pricing page. | 8.0SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and GDPR listed; self-hosted and VPC on Enterprise. |
| Overallweighted | 7.3weighted score out of 10 | 6.2weighted score out of 10 |
How each area is scored
- Accuracy (35%). The benchmark result, on a 0 to 10 scale.
- Resilience (15%). Does it just work? Fewer modes to choose, no tuning to reach the ranked result, no runs that fail outright, and no documents that come back quietly empty. Informed by the benchmark, judged by us.
- Price (15%). Published cost per page for parse plus extraction, cheapest scoring highest. Unpublished pricing is marked down.
- Getting started (10%). How far you get without a sales call: a dashboard, a free tier with no card, help authoring schemas, a test environment.
- API and integration (10%). Webhooks and which tier they are on, SDKs, no-code connectors, whether the API is built around document jobs at all.
- Data control (7.5%). Deletion controls, scheduled retention, zero-retention availability and on which tier, choice of region.
- Compliance (7.5%). Certifications stated on public pages: SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA with a BAA, GDPR, private deployment options.
By document type
Average accuracy on each group of benchmark documents, both systems on the same files. Every document and score is on the evidence page.
| Document type | Extend | Pulse AI |
|---|---|---|
| Short forms, invoices, receiptsone page · 30 documents | 88.8% Good | 72.7% Mixed |
| Scans and photosimages, not PDFs · 7 documents | 86.9% Good | 65.4% Mixed |
| Statements, filings, reports2 to 5 pages · 21 documents | 86.7% Good | 87.2% Good |
| Non-English documents12 languages · 25 documents | 69.3% Mixed | 65.7% Mixed |
| Long registers, catalogs, directories6 pages and up · 21 documents | 61.7% Mixed | 52.2% Weak |
| Extend | Pulse AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Credits. Extraction costs 3 credits per page plus 2 for the automatic parse, so 5 credits per page end to end. | Credits. 20,000 free credits on the free plan, then $0.015 per credit. Credits per page are not published. |
| Entry price | Pay-as-you-go is free to start with 10,000 credits, then $0.0125 per credit. Scale is $500/month for 50,000 credits at $0.01 per additional credit. | Free plan, then $0.015 per credit. Pro and Enterprise on request; annual billing 15% off. |
| Cost per page | About $0.06 per page pay-as-you-go, $0.05 on Scale. | Not derivable from the public page, since credits per page are not published. |
| Free tier | Yes. 10,000 credits, roughly 2,000 pages, on signup. | Yes. 20,000 credits. |
| Pay as you go | Yes. | Yes, on the free plan via overage. |
| Dashboard | Yes. Studio to build and test processors, an Evaluation suite for regression testing, Workflows that chain classify, split and extract, run logs, a Review Agent and human review, and a built-in test environment. | Yes. Pulse Platform: upload files, build pipelines from classify, extract, schema, tables, charts and split steps with saved presets, and see results with bounding boxes. 10 seats on the free plan. |
| Webhooks | Yes, with webhook endpoint and delivery logs in the dashboard. | Yes, including on the free plan. |
| API and SDKs | Python, TypeScript, Java, Go and REST on a date-versioned API. Parse, Extract, Classify, Split and Edit APIs; API request logs in the dashboard. | Python, TypeScript and REST. Async jobs, batch endpoints and saved pipeline presets. |
| Data retention | Zero and custom data retention policies offered; custom retention agreements on Scale and up. | Retention windows and delete-on-first-poll are configured per organization by contacting support; zero-data-retention on Pro and up; US or EU residency on Pro. |
| Compliance | HIPAA BAA as a paid add-on on Scale. SOC 2 not stated on the pricing page. | SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA (with agreement), GDPR listed on the security page. Self-hosted and VPC deployment on Enterprise. |
We checked these against the vendors' own pricing and documentation pages on 2026-09-11. Sources: Extend: www.extend.ai, docs.extend.ai; Pulse AI: www.runpulse.com, docs.runpulse.com. Prices change, so confirm before you budget.
Frequently asked
Which is more accurate, Extend or Pulse AI?
Extend, by about nine points overall (80.28% to 70.95%). Extend was far ahead on single pages, scans, and Hebrew and Arabic. Pulse was ahead on Chinese and Japanese scans and slightly on multi-page statements.
Which is cheaper, Extend or Pulse AI?
Extend publishes about five to six cents a page. Pulse publishes a per-credit rate but not credits per page, so its cost per page is unknown until quoted. Pulse's free tier of 20,000 credits is the larger.
Scores are macro-average field accuracy from the DocuBench 0.2.0, 72-document run. Every document, answer key, and raw extraction is open in the explorer; the scoring rules are on the methodology page, and the replication kit re-runs the scorer. A document a system could not process scores zero rather than being dropped.