Dolphin vs unstructured

Side-by-side comparison of two AI agent tools

Short answer

  • Dolphin has had no commit in 6 months; unstructured is actively maintained (32 commits in the last 90 days).
  • unstructured is growing faster: +188 GitHub stars in the last 30 days vs +28 for Dolphin.
  • Pick Dolphin for: the official repo for “Dolphin: Document Image Parsing via Heterogeneous Anchor Prompting”, ACL, 2025. Pick unstructured for: open-source ETL for converting documents into structured data for language models.

From GitHub data refreshed daily.

The official repo for “Dolphin: Document Image Parsing via Heterogeneous Anchor Prompting”, ACL, 2025.

unstructuredopen-source

Open-source ETL for converting documents into structured data for language models

Metrics

Dolphinunstructured
Stars9.1k15.5k
Star velocity /mo28.253968253968253187.93650793650792
Commits (90d)032
Releases (6m)010
Overall score0.233497012278650080.6743544689120442

Pros

  • +Universal document parsing capability that handles both digital and photographed documents seamlessly
  • +Advanced two-stage architecture with document-type-aware parsing strategies optimized for different document formats
  • +Comprehensive 21-element detection including complex elements like formulas, code blocks, and tables with attribute field extraction
  • +Open-source with active community support and transparent development process
  • +Purpose-built for AI/ML workflows with optimized output formats for language models
  • +Supports multiple Python versions with extensive compatibility and regular updates

Cons

  • -Research-focused tool that may require significant technical expertise to implement and integrate
  • -Relatively new release with limited production use cases and community feedback
  • -Large model size (3B parameters) may require substantial computational resources for deployment
  • -Requires Python programming knowledge and technical setup for implementation
  • -May need additional configuration and tuning for specific document types or formats
  • -Processing accuracy can vary depending on document complexity and quality

Use Cases

  • •Academic research document digitization and content extraction from PDFs and scanned papers
  • •Enterprise document processing for complex reports, invoices, and forms with mixed content types
  • •Automated parsing of technical documentation containing code snippets, mathematical formulas, and diagrams
  • •Preparing document collections for RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) systems and chatbots
  • •Converting enterprise documents into structured datasets for AI training and analysis
  • •Building automated content extraction pipelines for research and knowledge management

FAQ

Which is more popular, Dolphin or unstructured?
unstructured has more GitHub stars (15,527 vs 9,058).
Which is more actively developed, Dolphin or unstructured?
unstructured had more commits in the last 90 days (32 vs 0).
Should I use Dolphin or unstructured?
Compare their capabilities, limitations and "best for" notes above. Trying each on a small task is the fastest way to decide.
Dolphin vs unstructured (2026): GitHub Stats, Features & Which to Choose