CNIC to text, free and online

What you get when you convert a CNIC to text

Plain OCR gives you every word on the card in one block, in the order the scanner happened to find it, with Urdu and English mixed together. This tool returns each detail under its own name, so the CNIC number is in the CNIC number field and the expiry date is in the expiry field. That is what you need to paste into a form, a spreadsheet or your own system.

How to convert a CNIC to text

1. Photograph the card flat, in good light, with all four corners in frame and no glare across the number. A scan or a PDF works too.
2. Upload the front. The free try reads one image or the first page of a PDF, so upload the back separately if you need the address.
3. Check the fields against the card, especially names, since Urdu script is where a misread is most likely.
4. Copy what you need, or use Download to save it as Excel (.xlsx), CSV or JSON.

Which Pakistani ID cards it reads

• CNIC, the green computerised national identity card, in its older and newer layouts.
• Smart NIC (SNIC), the chip card NADRA issues today, front and back.
• NICOP, the card for overseas Pakistanis, and the POC (Pakistan Origin Card).
• Juvenile cards and the B-Form (Child Registration Certificate), which is a printed page rather than a card.
• Photocopies and attested copies, as long as the number is still sharp.

Reading the CNIC number

The 13 digits are grouped 5-7-1. Under NADRA's numbering the first digit stands for the province or region where the card was registered, and the last digit is odd for men and even for women. The tool returns the number exactly as printed, with its dashes, so it pastes cleanly into a form that expects the 00000-0000000-0 pattern. If a form wants the digits only, remove the dashes after you paste.

CNIC to Excel for many cards

HR teams, landlords, microfinance and onboarding teams often have a folder of CNIC photos to type into a sheet. The free try handles one card at a time, 5 a day. A free account reads up to 100 pages a month, keeps every result, and exports them together, one row per card, to Excel or CSV. For a whole onboarding flow, see KYC onboarding.

curl -X POST "$DOCREFINERY_API/v1/workflows/wf_demo_identity_card/run" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DOCREFINERY_API_KEY" \
  -F "[email protected]"

# Take trace_id from the answer, then poll until status is "fulfilled"
curl "$DOCREFINERY_API/v1/runway/9f1c0a7e" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DOCREFINERY_API_KEY"

{
  "trace_id": "9f1c0a7e",
  "status": "fulfilled",
  "document_type": "identity_card",
  "result": {
    "fields": [
      {
        "key": "full_name",
        "alias": "Full Name",
        "text": "Alex Sample",
        "field_confidence": 0.99,
        "location": { "page": 1, "bbox": [0.08, 0.12, 0.46, 0.14] }
      },
      {
        "key": "father_name",
        "alias": "Father Name",
        "text": "Sam Sample",
        "field_confidence": 0.98,
        "location": { "page": 1, "bbox": [0.08, 0.17, 0.46, 0.19] }
      },
      {
        "key": "national_identification_number",
        "alias": "Identity Number",
        "text": "00000-0000000-0",
        "field_confidence": 0.97,
        "location": { "page": 1, "bbox": [0.08, 0.22, 0.46, 0.24] }
      }
    ],
    "extraction_approval": "auto",
    "low_confidence_fields": []
  }
}