Supported File Types

The Parse API can parse the file types listed in the table below. Support depends on the method you use: the Playground or the API.

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Supported Formats

File Type	Playground	API
PDF
PDF	✓	✓
Images
JPEG	✓	✓
JPG	✓	✓
PNG	✓	✓
APNG	×	✓
BMP	×	✓
DCX	×	✓
DDS	×	✓
GIF	×	✓
ICNS	×	✓
JP2 (JPEG 2000)	×	✓
J2K (JPEG 2000)	×	✓
PBM	×	✓
PCX	×	✓
PGM	×	✓
PPM	×	✓
PSD	×	✓
TGA	×	✓
TIF	×	✓
TIFF	×	✓
WEBP	✓	✓
Text Documents (see notes here)
DOC (Word)	×	✓
DOCX (Word)	✓	✓
ODT (OpenDocument Text)	✓	✓
RTF (Rich Text Format)	×	✓
Presentations (see notes here)
PPT (PowerPoint)	×	✓
PPTX (PowerPoint)	✓	✓
Spreadsheets
CSV (comma-separated values)	×	✓ (up to 50 MB)
XLSX (Excel)	×	✓ (up to 50 MB)

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How Files Are Handled

• PDFs are processed one page at a time, so each page is parsed independently.
• Images are treated as a single page.
• Text documents and presentations are converted to PDF before parsing, then processed one page at a time.
• Spreadsheets are parsed directly. They are not converted to PDF.

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Unsupported Formats

The API does not accept these file types:

• HTML
• GD
• DIB files without a BMP header. A .dib file that is a BMP (starts with BM) is accepted.
• ODS (OpenDocument Spreadsheet) and ODP (OpenDocument Presentation)
• XLS (legacy binary Excel)

Parse detects most formats from the file content. CSV, TGA, DOC, and PPT files must also have the matching file extension (.csv, .tga, .doc, or .ppt).

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File Conversion for Text Documents and Presentations

Parse converts text documents and presentations to PDFs before parsing them. This conversion may change the document layout and increase or decrease the number of pages. For example, unsupported fonts may be replaced with larger alternatives, causing text to wrap differently or overflow onto additional pages. While the conversion process may impact the layout, Parse still parses content correctly. Page-based limits and credits apply to the converted PDF’s page count.

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File Size and Page Limits

For size and page limits, see Rate Limits.