Add Receipt OCR to Your App using Cursor in 5 Minutes

The problem: AI coding assistants can't read crumpled receipts

Tools like Cursor are remarkable at writing code — but they stop at the boundary of complex vision tasks. You can instruct Cursor to build a beautiful expense upload interface in minutes, yet the actual extraction of merchant names, purchased items, taxes, and totals from faded thermal paper requires a dedicated Receipt OCR API. Standard vision models routinely fail to format line items correctly or reliably parse numerical totals.

The solution: one API call, structured JSON

StructOCR's /v1/receipt endpoint accepts a photo and returns a clean JSON object with every field pre-labeled — no prompting, no parsing, no post-processing. Because it speaks plain HTTP, Cursor can easily generate the client or server-side fetch logic to wire it up instantly.

Integrate StructOCR using Cursor (3 Steps)

1. 1

   Open your project in Cursor and use Composer

   Open your web or mobile project in cursor.com. Hit Cmd+I (or Ctrl+I) to open the Composer. Describe the receipt scanning UI you want to build.

   💬Try this prompt: "Build a modern receipt scanner UI component using shadcn. Users can upload a photo of a receipt and see the merchant name, date, time, and total amount extracted automatically in a clean card."
2. 2

   Tell Cursor to call the StructOCR API

   Once Cursor scaffolds the component, paste the follow-up prompt below. Cursor will write the fetch call, handle the form data, and wire the response to your state variables.

   💬Follow-up prompt: "When a user uploads an image, Base64-encode it and send JSON { img: base64Image } to POST https://api.structocr.com/v1/receipt. Set x-api-key to my API key and Content-Type to application/json. Make the call from a server route so the API key is never exposed, then display the current response fields in the results panel."

   const base64Image = await fileToBase64(file); const response = await fetch('https://api.structocr.com/v1/receipt', { method: 'POST', headers: { 'x-api-key': process.env.STRUCTOCR_KEY, 'Content-Type': 'application/json', }, body: JSON.stringify({ img: base64Image }), });
3. 3

   Add your StructOCR API key to your .env file

   Open your local .env or .env.local file in Cursor and securely add your StructOCR key. Restart your development server to see the live scanner.

   💬Variable name: STRUCTOCR_KEY — keep it server-side and get your free key at structocr.com/dashboard

   STRUCTOCR_KEY=sk_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

What you can build in Cursor with this integration

• Corporate expense tracker: Let employees snap photos of their lunch or travel receipts and automatically populate a reimbursement tracker. Perfect for building custom expense management automation workflows.
• Loyalty & rewards scanning: Build a consumer app where users upload grocery receipts to prove purchase of specific brands and earn reward points automatically.
• Personal budgeting dashboard: Create a financial tool that reads your daily coffee and retail receipts, categorizes the spending, and calculates monthly totals — all engineered seamlessly inside Cursor.
• Tax preparation assistant: Parse hundreds of receipts to separate tax amounts and deductible expenses without manual data entry.

The prompt and the code

Copy the follow-up prompt into Cursor's Composer (Cmd+I) to generate the integration. The code block shows the standard fetch logic Cursor will likely produce. The Receipt API has been upgraded and the endpoint remains unchanged; standard mode costs 1 credit, and `?accuracy=enhanced` costs 2 credits. Run this integration in a server route or server action so the API key is not shipped to the browser.

Prerequisite: A free StructOCR account — get your API key at structocr.com/dashboard (no credit card required)

I need to add receipt OCR to this app.

When a user uploads an image:
1. Convert the image to a Base64 string.
2. Send JSON { img: base64Image } to: POST https://api.structocr.com/v1/receipt
3. Include x-api-key: ${STRUCTOCR_KEY} and Content-Type: application/json.
4. Read the current response fields: response_version, merchant_name, date, time, total_amount, tax_amount, currency, items[], status, issues, confidence, is_valid, and validation_error.
5. Display the fields, show a loading state, and handle non-2xx errors.

Make the API call from a server route or server action and keep the API key in the server-side STRUCTOCR_KEY environment variable. Standard mode costs 1 credit; use ?accuracy=enhanced for enhanced processing at 2 credits.

What the API returns

Every field is labeled and typed. Your UI built via Cursor can bind this directly to components without any complex mapping overrides.

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "response_version": 2,
    "is_valid": true,
    "confidence": "high",
    "merchant_name": "Blue Bottle Coffee",
    "date": "2026-04-22",
    "time": "08:45 AM",
    "currency": "USD",
    "total_amount": 14.5,
    "tax_amount": 1.25,
    "items": [
      {
        "name": "Caffe Latte - Large",
        "quantity": 2,
        "price": "11.00"
      },
      {
        "name": "Butter Croissant",
        "quantity": 1,
        "price": "3.50"
      }
    ],
    "validation_error": null,
    "status": "complete",
    "issues": []
  }
}