Is tesseract-ocr/tesseract still maintained, or is it a dead project?

The claim that Tesseract is a dead project could not be more inaccurate; it is very much alive and well. The Tesseract OCR engine, found at tesseract-ocr/tesseract, is actively maintained and has received recent updates, with the latest push occurring just 3 days ago.

Maintenance and Activity Signals

• Stars: 75,794 (an indicator of popularity)
• Last Updated: August 3, 2026
• Last Release: Version 5.5.3 was published on July 24, 2026.
• Contributors: There are 237 contributors involved, showcasing a healthy level of community engagement.
• Open Issues: Presently, there are 482 open issues, which is a normal part of any active project but does require monitoring for project health.

Project Overview

Tesseract, an OCR engine originally developed by Hewlett-Packard and later open-sourced by Google, uses both LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory) networks and legacy character recognition methods to accurately convert text from images. It supports over 100 languages and a variety of input and output formats, including text, PDF, and more.

License

The project is distributed under the Apache-2.0 license, which allows both personal and commercial use, making it flexible for various applications.

Summary

The evidence overwhelmingly supports a decisive conclusion: ✅ Tesseract is actively maintained and vibrant, contrary to notions of it being a "dead project." Whether you're looking to implement OCR for personal projects, business solutions, or further research, Tesseract offers a solid and continually evolving foundation for text recognition tasks.

For those considering OCR solutions, Tesseract stands as a capable default choice, especially given its broad community support and consistent updates. If you're venturing into OCR, choose Tesseract for its robustness and active maintenance.