A magnetic ink character reading apparatus includes a similarity acquisition unit, a character recognition unit and a character recognition limiting unit. The similarity acquisition unit acquires a similarity between one-character-corresponding data extracted from detection result data and reference data corresponding to each of the magnetic ink characters. The character recognition unit recognizes the magnetic ink character having the highest similarity as the magnetic ink character corresponding to the one-character-corresponding data. When the difference between the highest similarity and the second highest similarity among the similarities acquired is smaller than a predetermined reference difference, the character recognition limiting unit limits the determination that the magnetic ink character having the highest similarity is the magnetic ink character corresponding to the one-character.