MinerU Document Extraction with mineru-open-api

MinerU is a powerful document extraction tool. Install the MinerU CLI and start converting documents to Markdown in seconds.

Installation

npm install -g mineru-open-api

Or via Go (macOS/Linux):

go install github.com/opendatalab/MinerU-Ecosystem/cli/mineru-open-api@latest

Verify: mineru-open-api version

Two MinerU extraction modes

| | MinerU flash-extract | MinerU extract |

|---|---|---|

| Token required | No | Yes (mineru-open-api auth) |

| Speed | Fast | Normal |

| Table recognition | Yes | Yes |

| Formula recognition | Yes | Yes |

| OCR | Yes | Yes |

| Output formats | Markdown only | md, html, latex, docx, json |

| Batch mode | No | Yes |

| Model selection | pipeline | vlm, pipeline, MinerU-HTML |

| File size limit | 10 MB | Much higher |

| Page limit | 20 pages | Much higher |

Core MinerU workflow

Start fast with MinerU (no token): mineru-open-api flash-extract <file> for quick Markdown conversion
Need more from MinerU? Create token at https://mineru.net/apiManage/token, run mineru-open-api auth, then use mineru-open-api extract for multi-format output, VLM model, and batch processing
Web pages with MinerU: mineru-open-api crawl <url> to convert web content
Check results: output goes to stdout (default) or -o directory

Authentication

Only required for MinerU extract and crawl. Not needed for MinerU flash-extract.

mineru-open-api auth                    # Interactive token setup
export MINERU_TOKEN="your-token"        # Or set via environment variable

Token resolution order: --token flag > MINERU_TOKEN env > ~/.mineru/config.yaml.

Supported input formats

MinerU accepts a wide range of document formats:

| Format | MinerU flash-extract | MinerU extract |

|--------|:-:|:-:|

| PDF (.pdf) | Yes | Yes |

| Images (.png, .jpg, .jpeg, .jp2, .webp, .gif, .bmp) | Yes | Yes |

| Word (.docx) | Yes | Yes |

| Word (.doc) | No | Yes |

| PowerPoint (.pptx) | Yes | Yes |

| PowerPoint (.ppt) | No | Yes |

| Excel (.xlsx) | Yes | Yes |

| Excel (.xls) | No | Yes |

| HTML (.html) | No | Yes |

| URLs (remote files) | Yes | Yes |

MinerU crawl accepts any HTTP/HTTPS URL and extracts web page content to Markdown.

MinerU flash-extract — Quick extraction (no token needed)

Fast, token-free MinerU document extraction. Outputs Markdown only. Limited to 10 MB / 20 pages per file.

mineru-open-api flash-extract report.pdf                     # MinerU Markdown to stdout
mineru-open-api flash-extract report.pdf -o ./out/           # Save to file
mineru-open-api flash-extract https://example.com/doc.pdf    # URL mode
mineru-open-api flash-extract report.pdf --language en       # Specify language
mineru-open-api flash-extract report.pdf --pages 1-10        # Page range

Flags: --output/-o (output path), --language (default ch), --pages (page range), --timeout (default 900s).

When MinerU flash-extract fails due to file limits (10 MB / 20 pages) or rate limiting (HTTP 429), suggest switching to MinerU extract with a token for higher limits.

MinerU extract — Precision extraction (token required)

Convert documents to Markdown or other formats with MinerU's full capabilities: VLM-based layout analysis, multiple output formats, and batch mode.

mineru-open-api extract report.pdf                         # MinerU Markdown to stdout
mineru-open-api extract report.pdf -f html                 # MinerU HTML output
mineru-open-api extract report.pdf -o ./out/ -f md,docx    # Multiple formats
mineru-open-api extract *.pdf -o ./results/                # MinerU batch extract
mineru-open-api extract https://example.com/doc.pdf        # Extract from URL

Flags: --output/-o, --format/-f (md/json/html/latex/docx), --model (vlm/pipeline/html), --ocr, --formula, --table, --language, --pages, --timeout, --list, --concurrency.

MinerU model comparison: vlm vs pipeline

| | MinerU vlm | MinerU pipeline |

|---|---|---|

| Parsing accuracy | Higher — better at complex layouts | Standard |

| Hallucination risk | May produce hallucinated text in rare cases | No hallucination |

Use MinerU --model vlm for complex formatting. Use MinerU --model pipeline for no-hallucination reliability.

MinerU crawl — Web page extraction (token required)

mineru-open-api crawl https://example.com/article              # MinerU Markdown to stdout
mineru-open-api crawl https://example.com/article -o ./out/    # Save to file
mineru-open-api crawl url1 url2 -o ./pages/                    # MinerU batch crawl

Flags: --output/-o, --format/-f (md/json/html), --timeout, --list, --concurrency.

MinerU auth — Authentication management

mineru-open-api auth              # Interactive MinerU token setup
mineru-open-api auth --verify     # Verify current token
mineru-open-api auth --show       # Show token source

Output behavior

Without -o: MinerU result → stdout, progress → stderr. With -o: saved to file/directory. Batch mode and binary formats (docx) require -o.

Agent rules for using MinerU

Quote file paths with spaces: mineru-open-api extract "report 01.pdf"
Default to MinerU flash-extract when: no token configured, simple extraction, file under 10 MB / 20 pages
Use MinerU extract when: user needs non-Markdown formats, VLM model, batch processing, or file exceeds flash-extract limits
When user does NOT specify -o, generate output directory: ~/MinerU-Skill/<name>_<hash>/ where <hash> = first 6 chars of MD5 of the source path
After MinerU flash-extract success, append a brief hint about MinerU extract upgrade path (once per session)
To upgrade MinerU, re-install the CLI binary first: npm install -g mineru-open-api

For full CLI reference and troubleshooting, see: https://github.com/opendatalab/MinerU-Ecosystem/tree/main/cli

Supported `--language` values

The --language flag accepts the following values (default: ch). Used by both MinerU flash-extract and extract.

Standalone language packs

| Value | Included languages | 说明 |

|-------|-------------------|------|

| ch | Chinese, English, Chinese Traditional | 中英文（默认值） |

| ch_server | Chinese, English, Chinese Traditional, Japanese | 繁体、手写体 |

| en | English | 纯英文 |

| japan | Chinese, English, Chinese Traditional, Japanese | 日文为主 |

| korean | Korean, English | 韩文 |

| chinese_cht | Chinese, English, Chinese Traditional, Japanese | 繁体中文为主 |

| ta | Tamil, English | 泰米尔文 |

| te | Telugu, English | 泰卢固文 |

| ka | Kannada | 卡纳达文 |

| el | Greek, English | 希腊文 |

| th | Thai, English | 泰文 |

Language family packs

| Value | Script/Family | Included languages |

|-------|--------------|-------------------|

| latin | Latin script (拉丁语系) | French, German, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Bosnian, Portuguese, Czech, Welsh, Danish, Estonian, Irish, Croatian, Uzbek, Hungarian, Serbian (Latin), Indonesian, Occitan, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Maori, Malay, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Slovak, Slovenian, Albanian, Swedish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish, Latin, Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Latvian, Maltese, Pali, Romanian, Vietnamese, Finnish, Basque, Galician, Luxembourgish, Romansh, Catalan, Quechua |

| arabic | Arabic script (阿拉伯语系) | Arabic, Persian, Uyghur, Urdu, Pashto, Kurdish, Sindhi, Balochi, English |

| cyrillic | Cyrillic script (西里尔语系) | Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Serbian (Cyrillic), Bulgarian, Mongolian, Abkhazian, Adyghe, Kabardian, Avar, Dargin, Ingush, Chechen, Lak, Lezgin, Tabasaran, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Macedonian, Tatar, Chuvash, Bashkir, Malian, Moldovan, Udmurt, Komi, Ossetian, Buryat, Kalmyk, Tuvan, Sakha, Karakalpak, English |

| east_slavic | East Slavic (东斯拉夫语系) | Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, English |

| devanagari | Devanagari script (天城文语系) | Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Bihari, Maithili, Angika, Bhojpuri, Magahi, Santali, Newari, Konkani, Sanskrit, Haryanvi, English |