Extend vs Pulse
A side-by-side comparison of Extend and Pulse, two Data Ops tools, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
At a glance
| Attribute | Extend | Pulse |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Data Ops | Data Ops |
| Pricing | FREEMIUM | FREEMIUM |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Deployment | Cloud | Cloud |
| Platforms (differs) | API, Web | Web, API |
| Model support (differs) | Model-agnostic | Self-contained (on-device) |
| Vendor (differs) | Extend AI | Pulse AI |
| Capabilities (differs) |
|
|
The honest brief
Extend
Ensembles multiple frontier models and pairs the API with a web Studio for schema iteration and evals — tuned for 99%+ accuracy on handwriting and tables.
- Handles handwriting, tables, mixed formats
- Studio UI for schema design + evals
- SDKs for Python, TypeScript, and CLI
- Free credits, then pay-as-you-go
- Used by Brex, Square, Checkr
- Newer than incumbent IDP vendors
- Cloud-first; self-host is enterprise-only
- Usage-credit pricing needs estimation
Pulse
Built its own OCR + layout + vision stack (the Ultra model) for messy financial, medical, and legal documents, rather than wrapping a general LLM.
- Purpose-built models for hard layouts
- Handles PDFs, Office files, scans
- Free sandbox to evaluate
- Used by large enterprises
- Cloud-only (no self-host)
- Self-serve pricing not public
- Closed-source models
When to pick which
They share capabilities, but each leads with different ones as a headline job:
Extend is built around Structured extraction.
- Structured extraction (primary capability)
Pulse is built around OCR / scanned-document extraction.
- OCR / scanned-document extraction (primary capability)
Their capability lists differ in recorded depth — compare the full lists above before deciding.