Reducto vs Pulse AI
Two dedicated extraction APIs that both market accuracy on hard documents. Reducto was eighteen points more accurate overall, far more predictable, and publishes a per-page price. Pulse AI has a fuller free tier, webhooks and a platform UI without a plan, an edge on Chinese and Japanese scans, and returned nothing on several ordinary files. On most corpora Reducto is the clear pick.
On paper these two compete head-on: API-first extraction, a pipeline builder each, SDKs, webhooks, enterprise security pages. Pulse pitches complex tables in finance, healthcare, and legal. Reducto pitches accuracy and a premium extraction mode. In our benchmark Reducto came third and Pulse seventh.
Reducto led on nearly every group: single pages, multi-page statements, long registers, non-English documents, photographed pages. On Hebrew and Arabic layouts the gap was enormous, with Reducto second only to DocuPipe and Pulse the weakest. Pulse's one clear win was Chinese and Japanese scans, where it was among the better systems and Reducto was middling. Pulse's worst results fell on easy documents, a purchase order, an invoice, a structured export, each returned empty while Reducto read them near perfectly.
On resilience both have a mode question. Reducto's ranked result needs Deep Extract and Pulse's needs its top model tier with extended reasoning. Beyond that, Reducto's failures are predictable, under-returning on the longest documents, while Pulse's aren't, which is the harder kind to plan around.
On price Reducto publishes about three cents a page and $150 of free usage, with Deep Extract not priced publicly. 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 the more generous. Reducto's paid price is the one you can actually see.
On product both are real platforms. Pulse Platform assembles pipelines from classify, extract, schema, tables, charts, and split steps with saved presets and bounding-box results, and puts webhooks, async jobs, batch endpoints, and ten seats on the free tier, with SDKs in Python and TypeScript. Reducto Studio builds pipelines with a bounding-box citation viewer, and there are five APIs, SDKs in Python, Node, and Go, an MCP server and CLI, and signed webhooks on async endpoints, with custom webhooks on Growth. On data and compliance Reducto deletes within a day by default and holds SOC 2 Type II, with zero retention, EU residency, and a BAA on Growth. Pulse sets retention up through support, lists SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR, and offers self-hosting on Enterprise.
So Reducto, unless your corpus is specifically Chinese and Japanese scans and a free-tier trial on Pulse shows your files come back at all. In that case get a per-page price and compare again.
Most corpora, and certainly anything with Hebrew or Arabic, short business documents, or files you can't afford to have silently dropped.
Chinese and Japanese material, after a free-tier trial on your own files and a written per-page price.
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 | Reducto | Pulse AI |
|---|---|---|
| Accuracy35% of total | 8.9Ranked 3rd of 8 systems on the benchmark. | 7.1Ranked 7th of 8 systems on the benchmark. |
| Resilience15% of total | 6.0The ranked result needs Deep Extract, a different mode from the default, and on long documents it returns fewer entries than exist without saying so. | 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 | 7.0Published $0.03 per page is among the lowest, but the ranked Deep Extract mode is not priced publicly. | 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 | 7.0Studio pipeline builder with a citation viewer and $150 of free usage; no schema-drafting assistant stated. | 7.0Platform UI with ten seats and 20,000 free credits; everything past that is custom pricing. |
| API and integration10% of total | 7.0Four SDKs plus an MCP server and CLI, async endpoints with signed webhooks; custom webhooks gated to the Growth plan. | 8.0Webhooks on the free tier, Python and TypeScript SDKs, async and batch endpoints. |
| Data control7.5% of total | 7.0Documents deleted within 24 hours by default; zero retention and EU residency on Growth and up. | 6.0Retention configured by contacting support; zero retention and regional residency on Pro. |
| Compliance7.5% of total | 7.0SOC 2 Type II; HIPAA BAA only on Growth and up. | 8.0SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and GDPR listed; self-hosted and VPC on Enterprise. |
| Overallweighted | 7.5weighted 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 | Reducto | Pulse AI |
|---|---|---|
| Statements, filings, reports2 to 5 pages · 21 documents | 93.1% Good | 87.2% Good |
| Short forms, invoices, receiptsone page · 30 documents | 90.2% Good | 72.7% Mixed |
| Long registers, catalogs, directories6 pages and up · 21 documents | 84.5% Good | 52.2% Weak |
| Non-English documents12 languages · 25 documents | 84.0% Good | 65.7% Mixed |
| Scans and photosimages, not PDFs · 7 documents | 83.2% Good | 65.4% Mixed |
| Reducto | Pulse AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Pay-as-you-go per page, with Parse and Extract billed separately. Volume and enterprise plans on request. | Credits. 20,000 free credits on the free plan, then $0.015 per credit. Credits per page are not published. |
| Entry price | $150 of free usage to start. Then Parse $10 per 1,000 pages and Extract $20 per 1,000 pages. | Free plan, then $0.015 per credit. Pro and Enterprise on request; annual billing 15% off. |
| Cost per page | $0.03 per page for parse plus extract on the standard tier. Deep Extract, the ranked config, is not priced separately on the public page. | Not derivable from the public page, since credits per page are not published. |
| Free tier | Yes. $150 of usage on signup. | Yes. 20,000 credits. |
| Pay as you go | Yes. The standard tier is pure pay-as-you-go. | Yes, on the free plan via overage. |
| Dashboard | Yes. Reducto Studio: a visual pipeline builder to configure, test and deploy multi-step workflows in the browser, with a citation viewer down to the bounding box. 5 seats on the standard tier. No schema-drafting assistant stated. | 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 | Signed webhooks on all async endpoints per the docs; the pricing page lists custom webhooks as a Growth-and-up feature. | Yes, including on the free plan. |
| API and SDKs | Python, Node.js, Go and REST, plus an MCP server and a CLI. Classify, Parse, Extract, Split and Edit APIs; async endpoints for every operation. | Python, TypeScript and REST. Async jobs, batch endpoints and saved pipeline presets. |
| Data retention | Documents deleted within 24 hours by default; zero-retention agreement on Growth and up. EU data residency available. | 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 | SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA BAA on Growth and up. | 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: Reducto: reducto.ai, docs.reducto.ai; Pulse AI: www.runpulse.com, docs.runpulse.com. Prices change, so confirm before you budget.
Frequently asked
Which is more accurate, Reducto or Pulse AI?
Reducto, by about eighteen points overall (89.38% to 70.95%). Pulse was ahead only on Chinese and Japanese scans and returned nothing on several ordinary one-page documents.
Which is cheaper, Reducto or Pulse AI?
Reducto publishes about three 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 more generous.
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.