A Free PDF Scanner App for iPhone, Without a Subscription
Almost every scanner in the App Store is free to install. The interesting question is what happens on the fourth scan.
The five ways a free scanner stops being free
- A watermark on exportThe scan is free, the clean file is not. You find out when the PDF is already in someone else's inbox.
- A page or document capThree pages per document, or five documents in total, and the fourth asks for money.
- Recognition behind a trialThe scan works, but search and text export are locked, which is usually the reason you installed a scanner rather than using Notes.
- An account you did not ask forSign in to continue, and your documents are now on someone's server. For payslips and identity documents that is a real decision, not a formality.
- A trial that renewsSeven days free, then a yearly charge. Perfectly legal, easy to miss, and the reason so many people search for scanners with a one time price.
Test any scanner in sixty seconds
- Scan one page and export it. Open the PDF and look at the corners and the footer for a watermark.
- Scan four more. Caps and paywalls usually appear between the third and the sixth document.
- Search inside the exported PDF. Open it in Files and search for a word you can see on the page. Nothing highlights means there is no text layer.
- Turn on airplane mode and scan again. If it stalls, the app is doing work on a server, which means your page went there.
- Read the In App Purchases list on the App Store page. A row that says per month or per year is a subscription, whatever the screenshots promise.
How Paperlane answers those five
Free, with no time limit and no expiry:
- Unlimited scans and unlimited pages per document
- No watermark on any export, on any tier
- Edge detection and perspective correction from Apple VisionKit
- A searchable text layer written into every scan, using Apple's on device Vision framework
- Full text search across the whole library, including the recognized text
- Automatic naming, folders, favourites, sorting, rename and duplicate
- Page reordering, page deletion, adding a page from your photos, and rotation
- ID mode, which puts the front and back of a card on one page
- A Face ID or passcode lock on the library
- No account, no sign in, nothing uploaded
Not free, and honestly so:
- Text export as .txt or .docx, and copying the recognized text
- JPG and PNG export
- PDF compression
- Markup and signing
- Password protection
- Combining documents into one PDF
- Saving a business card as a contact
- Smart rename from the document content
And the ads. The free version carries advertising from Google AdMob: a banner under the library and an occasional full screen ad when you close a document, capped at one every three minutes and never in your first session. Consent is asked before the first ad loads and can be withdrawn later under Ad privacy. That is how the free tier is paid for instead of a watermark. Paperlane Pro removes it.
What the upgrade costs
Paperlane Pro is $4.99 in the United States, charged once. It is a non consumable in app purchase, which is Apple's term for a purchase that does not renew and cannot lapse. It restores on any iPhone signed in to the same Apple ID, including after a reinstall or a new phone.
Get Paperlane
Free on the App Store, iOS 17.0 or later. Rated 5.0 out of 5 from 1 rating.