Installation

Kreuzberg ships native bindings for 12 languages and a standalone CLI. Pick your stack, run one command, and start extracting.

Every package includes prebuilt binaries for Linux (x86_64 / aarch64), macOS (Apple Silicon), and Windows — no compile step needed.

Windows — ONNX Runtime required for Go, Elixir, and C/C++

Go, Elixir, and C/C++ bindings on Windows link against ONNX Runtime dynamically. You must have onnxruntime.dll on your PATH at runtime. Download it from the ONNX Runtime releases (for example onnxruntime-win-x64-1.24.1.zip). Python, TypeScript, Java, C#, Ruby, PHP, and WASM are unaffected.

x86_64 CPU — AVX/AVX2 instruction set required

The bundled ONNX Runtime binaries require AVX/AVX2 CPU instructions. CPUs without AVX support (e.g. Intel Atom, Celeron N5105/Jasper Lake, older pre-2011 processors) will crash with an invalid opcode trap when using ONNX-dependent features. The affected features are PaddleOCR, layout detection, and embeddings. All other Kreuzberg functionality (text extraction, Tesseract OCR, chunking, metadata, etc.) works normally on any x86_64 CPU. ARM platforms (aarch64) are unaffected.

CLI / Docker

The fastest way to try Kreuzberg - no SDK, no code, just your terminal.

Install script

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kreuzberg-dev/kreuzberg-lts/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

Homebrew

brew install kreuzberg-dev/tap/kreuzberg

Cargo

cargo install kreuzberg-cli

Docker (CLI image)

docker pull ghcr.io/kreuzberg-dev/kreuzberg-cli:latest
docker run -v $(pwd):/data ghcr.io/kreuzberg-dev/kreuzberg-cli:latest extract /data/document.pdf

Docker (full image)

docker pull ghcr.io/kreuzberg-dev/kreuzberg-full:latest

CLI Usage API Server Guide

---

Choose your language

• Python

  ---

  pip install kreuzberg

  API Reference Quick Start

• TypeScript (Node.js / Bun)

  ---

  npm install @kreuzberg/node

  API Reference Quick Start

• TypeScript (Browser / Edge)

  ---

  npm install @kreuzberg/wasm

  API Reference Quick Start

• Rust

  ---

  cargo add kreuzberg

  API Reference Quick Start

• Go

  ---

  go get github.com/kreuzberg-dev/kreuzberg-lts/v4@latest

  API Reference Quick Start

• Java

  ---

  implementation 'dev.kreuzberg:kreuzberg:4.10.2'

  API Reference Quick Start

• Ruby

  ---

  gem install kreuzberg

  API Reference Quick Start

• C# / .NET

  ---

  dotnet add package Kreuzberg

  API Reference Quick Start

• PHP

  ---

  composer require kreuzberg/kreuzberg

  API Reference Quick Start

• Elixir

  ---

  {:kreuzberg, "~> 4.0"}

  API Reference Quick Start

• R

  ---

  install.packages("kreuzberg",
    repos = "https://kreuzberg-dev.r-universe.dev")

  API Reference Quick Start

• C / C++

  ---

  cargo build -p kreuzberg-ffi

  API Reference Quick Start

---

System requirements

Most of the time you won’t need anything beyond the install command above. The table below only matters if you’re building from source or want OCR:

Dependency	When you need it
AVX/AVX2 CPU instructions	Required for ONNX Runtime features (PaddleOCR, layout detection, embeddings) on x86_64
Rust toolchain (rustup)	Building any native binding from source
C/C++ compiler	Building native bindings (Xcode CLI tools / build-essential / MSVC)
Tesseract OCR	Optional — brew install tesseract / apt install tesseract-ocr
PDFium	Auto-fetched during builds

The WASM package (@kreuzberg/wasm) has zero system dependencies.

GPU Acceleration

Kreuzberg bundles a CPU-only ONNX Runtime — ML features (PaddleOCR, layout detection, embeddings) work out of the box on CPU.

For GPU acceleration, install a GPU-enabled ONNX Runtime and set ORT_DYLIB_PATH:

Platform	Install	Set ORT_DYLIB_PATH
Linux (CUDA)	Download from ONNX Runtime releases	export ORT_DYLIB_PATH=/path/to/libonnxruntime.so
Python (any OS)	pip install onnxruntime-gpu	Point at the pip package’s capi/ directory
macOS (CoreML)	Works with bundled ORT — no extra setup needed	—

See AccelerationConfig and ORT_DYLIB_PATH for details.

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Language-specific notes

For most languages the install command above is all you need. The sections below cover edge cases and alternative install methods where they come up.

TypeScript

Two npm packages target different runtimes:

Package	Best for	Performance
@kreuzberg/node	Node.js, Bun — server-side apps	Native (100%)
@kreuzberg/wasm	Browsers, Deno, Cloudflare Workers	WASM (~60-80%)

Both work with pnpm (pnpm add) and yarn (yarn add) as well.

pnpm workspaces

In monorepos, add this to your root .npmrc so platform-specific optional deps resolve correctly:

auto-install-peers=true

WASM — Browser usage

<script type="module">
  import { initWasm, extractFromFile } from "@kreuzberg/wasm";

  await initWasm();

  const input = document.getElementById("file");
  input.addEventListener("change", async (e) => {
    const result = await extractFromFile(e.target.files[0]);
    console.log(result.content);
  });
</script>
<input type="file" id="file" />

WASM — Deno

import { initWasm, extractFile } from "npm:@kreuzberg/wasm";

await initWasm();
const result = await extractFile("./document.pdf");
console.log(result.content);

WASM — Cloudflare Workers

import { initWasm, extractBytes } from "@kreuzberg/wasm";

export default {
  async fetch(request: Request): Promise<Response> {
    await initWasm();
    const bytes = new Uint8Array(await request.arrayBuffer());
    const result = await extractBytes(bytes, "application/pdf");
    return Response.json({ content: result.content });
  },
};

Supported runtimes: Chrome 74+, Firefox 79+, Safari 14+, Edge 79+, Node.js 22+, Deno 1.35+, Cloudflare Workers.

WASM Platform Limitations

The WASM binding does not support:

• Layout detection (RT-DETR model inference requires ONNX Runtime unavailable in WebAssembly)
• Hardware acceleration config (single-threaded WASM, no GPU access)
• Concurrency config (single-threaded environment, maxThreads is ignored)
• Email codepage config (EmailConfig not available)

All other features (text extraction, OCR via Tesseract WASM, chunking, embeddings, metadata, tables, language detection, image extraction) work fully in WASM. See the WASM API Reference for details.

Java

Maven

<dependency>
    <groupId>dev.kreuzberg</groupId>
    <artifactId>kreuzberg</artifactId>
    <version>4.10.2</version>
</dependency>

Gradle

implementation 'dev.kreuzberg:kreuzberg:4.10.2'

Requires Java 25+ (FFM/Panama API). Native libraries are bundled in the JAR.

Elixir

Add to mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:kreuzberg, "~> 4.0"}
  ]
end

mix deps.get

Ships prebuilt NIF binaries via RustlerPrecompiled. Falls back to compiling from source if no prebuilt matches your platform (requires Rust).

Windows

The Windows NIF links against ONNX Runtime dynamically. onnxruntime.dll must be on your PATH at runtime — see the note at the top of this page.

Go

go get github.com/kreuzberg-dev/kreuzberg-lts/v4@latest

Windows

The Go binding links against ONNX Runtime dynamically on Windows. onnxruntime.dll must be on your PATH at runtime — see the note at the top of this page.

Windows feature limitations

The Go and C/C++ bindings on Windows (MinGW/GNU target) do not include PaddleOCR, layout detection, or auto-rotate. Tesseract OCR and all other features work normally. These limitations apply only to Windows; Linux and macOS builds include the full feature set.

Rust

Enable features selectively in Cargo.toml:

Cargo.toml

[dependencies]
kreuzberg = { version = "4", features = ["tokio-runtime"] }
# Optional features: pdf, ocr, chunking

C / C++

Build the FFI library from source:

cargo build --release -p kreuzberg-ffi

This produces libkreuzberg_ffi.a and a header at crates/kreuzberg-ffi/kreuzberg.h. Link into your project:

HEADER_DIR = path/to/crates/kreuzberg-ffi
LIBDIR     = path/to/target/release

CFLAGS  = -Wall -Wextra -I$(HEADER_DIR)
LDFLAGS = -L$(LIBDIR) -lkreuzberg_ffi -lpthread -ldl -lm

my_app: my_app.c
  $(CC) $(CFLAGS) -o $@ $< $(LDFLAGS)

Platform-specific linker flags

macOS: add -framework CoreFoundation -framework Security Windows: add -lws2_32 -luserenv -lbcrypt

Windows

The Windows FFI library links against ONNX Runtime dynamically. onnxruntime.dll must be on your PATH at runtime — see the note at the top of this page.

API Reference →

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Development setup

Working on the Kreuzberg repo itself:

task setup      # installs all language toolchains
task lint        # linters across all languages
task dev:test    # full test suite

See Contributing for conventions and expectations.