Frequently asked questions

Populate.ai is a browser-first tool that turns bills, invoices, receipts, photos, and dictated notes into clean, structured data you can export to CSV, XLS, or PDF. A 5-agent pipeline runs OCR, cleans the text, spell-checks, translates if needed, and scores confidence before showing you the result.

Freelancers, accountants, small businesses, and anyone tired of typing line items from a paper receipt into a spreadsheet. If you process a handful of documents a week or hundreds a day, it works the same.

Yes. The current version is free to use. Anonymous use and signing in to save your work are both currently free. We may introduce paid plans for high-volume users later.

No account is needed to use Populate.ai — upload and extract anonymously, and nothing is stored on our servers. If you'd like your documents saved and available across devices, you can optionally sign in. Signed-in documents are stored securely and you can delete them anytime.

PDF, PNG, JPG, and common audio formats (WebM, MP4/M4A, MP3, WAV, OGG, AAC) for dictation.

Each file is capped at 15 MB, and the combined size of files in a single upload session is also capped at 15 MB total. This is a free service and the cap keeps processing fast and reliable for everyone.

No — table extraction and Intelligent OCR each process one document per run, so every page gets full attention. Source documents and notes inside a client/case still accept multiple files.

Yes. Tap "Take photo" on a mobile device and your camera opens directly. Aim for good lighting and a flat surface for the best OCR.

Tap "Dictate" to record yourself describing an expense — e.g. "Lunch with Maya, twenty-two euros, June 12, paid by card." Populate.ai transcribes and structures it just like a scanned receipt.

If you use Populate.ai anonymously, your documents are processed only to extract your data, are not stored on our servers, and the structured result is kept only in your browser's local storage. If you sign in, your documents and extracted data are stored securely in your account so you can access them across devices — and you can delete any document, or your whole account, at any time. In both cases, extraction is performed via a secure AI processing service that keeps no copy of your files.

No. Your documents are not used to train any model.

Yes — every file is checked in your browser before processing. We verify the file's actual contents match its declared type, block executables and archives, and scan PDFs for active-content tokens commonly used by malware.

If you're signed in, your processed documents are saved to your account and will be there when you return, on any device. If you're using Populate.ai anonymously, processed documents are kept only in your browser's local storage — clearing your browser data removes them.

Yes. Signed-in users can delete any individual document, and can delete their entire account and all associated data from account settings. Deletion is permanent and removes your documents and personal data from our systems.

Each field gets a confidence score. Anything below 90% is automatically routed to the Review queue so you can verify it. In practice, clean PDFs score very high; photos of crumpled receipts vary.

Extract (OCR / vision), Clean (normalize text), Spell-check (fix recognition errors), Translate (optional, into your preferred language), and Score (confidence + flagging for review).

OCR handles the major Latin-script languages and many non-Latin scripts out of the box. The translate step can render the cleaned output in English or your preferred target language.

Open the document from "Recent" or the "Review queue," click any field, and edit it. Corrections are saved instantly.

CSV (universal spreadsheet), XLS (Excel), and a formatted PDF summary. CSV is the most flexible for downstream tools.

Direct integrations aren't built in yet. For now, export CSV/XLS and import into your tool of choice. Tell us which integration you'd like — popular requests get prioritized.

The file looked like an executable, an archive, or a PDF with active content. Re-export it as a plain PDF ("Print to PDF" works well) or save the image as PNG/JPG and try again.

Re-scan with brighter, even lighting, lay the document flat, and avoid heavy shadows. For phone photos, hold the camera straight on (not angled).

Refresh the page — your file isn't lost, processing resumes from your local queue. If it happens repeatedly, try a smaller file or a different format.

If you're signed in, your documents are tied to your account — make sure you're signed in on the device you're using. If you used Populate.ai anonymously, documents live only in the browser you created them in and won't appear on other browsers or devices.

Email us or use the feedback link in the footer of any results page. Specific examples (a redacted screenshot, the field that was wrong) help us fix things fast.

Plenty. Without giving the game away: smarter automation around the documents you already process, deeper answers from the Ask Populate copilot, richer reporting for your books, more ways to get data out of Populate and into the tools you already use, and a smoother mobile capture experience. The roadmap is shaped by what users ask for most.

Yes — connecting Populate to the accounting and storage tools small teams already live in is a priority. We're being deliberate about which ones ship first, so tell us what you use and it moves up the list.

We're exploring how more than one person can work on the same books safely, with the right visibility for each role. More on that when it's ready.

Very much so. Beta users have already shaped several shipped features. Send a request through the Populate Assistant or the contact form and we'll tell you honestly whether it's near-term or further out.