From $16 per month🇺🇸
Web data API that turns pages into Markdown or JSON for AI models, with search, crawl and natural-language page interaction.
Jina Reader AI features, pricing and GDPR (October 2026)
URL-to-Markdown and search API from Jina AI in Berlin, now part of Elastic, with small models for HTML conversion and image captions.
Usage-basedFree plan
Pricing: Usage-based
Free use without an API key at 20 requests per minute for reading; new keys include 10 million free tokens. Paid tiers are billed by output tokens; no amounts were shown on the Reader page in September 2026.
What is Jina Reader?
Jina Reader turns any URL into text that language models can use: prefix a link with r.jina.ai and get clean Markdown, or query s.jina.ai to get search results as Markdown.
Reader extracts the main content of a page, removes boilerplate and handles PDFs natively. The search endpoint returns the top five results with their content. Jina AI GmbH in Berlin developed the service and was acquired by Elastic in October 2025; commercial licensing and support now run through Elastic. The code of the Reader service is on GitHub under Apache 2.0, while the ReaderLM-v2 model is licensed CC-BY-NC 4.0.
Jina Reader AI features and use cases
- Converts HTML into clean MarkdownReaderLM-v2, a 1.54 billion parameter model, turns HTML into Markdown or JSON. Teams building chatbots or retrieval systems get compact text from any page with one HTTP call instead of maintaining a parser.
- Describes images on pagesA vision-language model writes captions for images, so image-heavy pages and documents still produce usable text. Downstream models can answer questions about charts or product photos that would otherwise be lost.
- Grounds answers in current search resultss.jina.ai searches the web and returns the top five results as Markdown. An assistant can check recent facts before answering, and each result arrives ready for the model context. No separate search API subscription is needed for this step.
What sets Jina Reader apart
- Works without an API key for light use, by prefixing a URL with r.jina.ai.
- Developed in Berlin; on-premises licensing has been available through Elastic since August 2026.
Where Jina Reader is strongest
Germany Available internationally
The provider, Jina AI GmbH, is registered in Berlin; since October 2025 it belongs to Elastic N.V., and data processing follows Elastic's terms.
Questions to ask before you buy Jina Reader
Since the Elastic acquisition, the Elastic Customer DPA governs data processing; the Jina legal page links it. The Reader page does not state where data is hosted, so ask for hosting details. The ReaderLM-v2 model is licensed for non-commercial use only; commercial self-hosting needs a license from Elastic. Paid tiers bill by tokens, and each search costs at least 10,000 tokens.
Using Jina Reader in the EU: GDPR and AI Act
- Data locationNot published by the vendor.
- Data processing agreementPublic, read it here (opens in a new tab).
- EU AI ActCheck whether the AI prepares decisions about people. If not, the high-risk rules usually do not apply. The high-risk obligations apply from December 2, 2027 (Digital Omnibus).
General information with sources, not legal advice.
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Questions about Jina Reader
Can we use Jina Reader for free?
Yes, for light use. Without an API key the reader allows 20 requests per minute and search 100 per minute, and new users get 10 million free tokens.
Does Jina use our requests for training?
The Reader page states that API data is never used for model training. It also says Reader does not actively bypass anti-bot systems or other website defenses. A robots.txt check can be switched on per request with the X-Robots-Txt header.
Who is the contracting party today?
Jina AI GmbH in Berlin belongs to Elastic N.V. since October 2025. Commercial licenses, support and the data processing agreement run through Elastic.
Jina Reader update historyno updates yet
No changes recorded for Jina Reader yet.
Changes the vendor made and confirmed user reports, each checked against the vendor's own pages. We review every tool monthly.
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