The 3 Best Mobile Scanning Apps Of 2026 Reviews By Wirecutter

By Matthew Guay When life gives you paper, your phone can turn it into clear PDF scans in 10 seconds flat. Modern smartphones come equipped with a scanning tool, tucked away in Apple Notes on iPhones and Google Drive or Files on Android phones. These apps are good enough for the occasional scan, but dedicated mobile scanning apps offer faster, higher-quality scans, often for free. After six years of testing, Adobe Scan remains our favorite mobile scanning app.

It snaps clear scans in seconds, includes optical character recognition (OCR) and editing tools, and has a generous free mode. It’s the best choice if you regularly scan documents from your phone. Everything we recommend Top pick Free, fast, and full of features, this is the best app for scanning documents into clean PDFs. Best for... This app lets you scan books into individual pages with fast snaps and automatic curve correction.

But it doesn’t sync scans to the cloud, and it has fewer editing and annotation tools than our top pick. Best for... Take a single scan of a page full of pictures or business cards to save each photo individually. This app lacks OCR, so it’s not a good choice for scanning pages of text. What we looked for - Automatic shooting The best scanning apps automatically recognize document edges and snap a clear scan — no taps or button presses required.

Scanning modes Additional modes scan books, multipage spreads, business cards, and more, with features to split pages or save contact info. - Annotation tools When automatic crops or lighting need adjustment, or scanned forms need to be filled out, you can make edits with annotation tools. - OCR Optical character recognition lets you search through and copy scanned text, tap on links or phone numbers, and edit documents. Top pick Free, fast, and full of features, this is the best app for scanning documents into clean PDFs.

Adobe Scan (Android, iOS) is fast and straightforward, with more professional scanning features than the competition. It has presets for common document types, great OCR, and tools to bulk-edit scans and adjust for brightness and clarity. It took us one tap and 10 seconds to automatically scan, enhance, crop, and save a single document into a PDF file complete with OCR. Scans are automatically saved to Adobe Document Cloud and synced to Adobe Acrobat for safekeeping and office work.

The app’s core features are free, including unlimited scans, 2 GB of cloud storage, OCR on documents up to 25 pages, and basic editing features. Upgrading to Premium ($10 per month) gets you OCR editing, more export formats, OCR on up to 100-page documents, and 20 GB of cloud storage. Best for... This app lets you scan books into individual pages with fast snaps and automatic curve correction. But it doesn’t sync scans to the cloud, and it has fewer editing and annotation tools than our top pick.

vFlat (Android, iOS) is impressively fast at all types of scanning, but it excels at scanning books. Open a book and switch to vFlat’s two-page mode to snap, straighten, and save each page individually while removing most of the distortion and page curve. We recommend this if you need to regularly scan book pages to reference later.

While it took Adobe Scan 30 seconds, from start to save, to scan four documents, vFlat accomplished the same job in 17 seconds — with a slight loss in clarity and no OCR by default, but with sharper cropped edges. vFlat does not sync scans to the cloud, nor does it include as many editing and annotation features as Adobe Scan. Its free plan limits you to 10 PDF exports with OCR and five two-page scans each month. Unlimited exports cost $4 a month.

The free plan is worth considering if you need to occasionally scan documents quickly (especially two-page layouts), while the paid plan is a good option if you scan more than five pages from books per month. Best for... Take a single scan of a page full of pictures or business cards to save each photo individually. This app lacks OCR, so it’s not a good choice for scanning pages of text. Photomyne (Android, iOS) is the only app we tested that consistently produced photo scans with accurate color.

It’s also the only app that can capture multiple photo or business card scans with a single shot. Its document scanning is lackluster, though, lacking the OCR and annotation tools most rivals offer. And while you can use Photomyne for free to scan photos and save them to Google Photos, most features require $20-per-month or $60-per-year paid plans. The research Why you should trust us Wirecutter has been writing about scanning since 2013. I’ve been testing and writing about software professionally since 2010.

Over that time, I’ve tested a wide range of productivity software. I’ve used scanning apps, especially Apple Notes, on my iPhone to scan documents regularly for more than a decade. For this guide: - We’ve researched and tested at least 10 scanning apps annually since 2018. For this round of testing, we spent over 28 hours testing 21 apps. - With each round of testing, we’ve retested our previous picks, as well as updated apps from the Competition section and apps that have come out since our last update.

Like all Wirecutter journalists, we review and test products with complete editorial independence. We’re never made aware of any business implications of our editorial recommendations. Read more about our editorial standards. Who this is for To quickly scan business cards, receipts, ID cards, forms, and everyday paper in a pinch, everyone should use either the scanning features included in their phone or a dedicated, third-party mobile scanning app. Every modern smartphone camera is perfectly capable of snapping clear scans of documents in seconds.

And thanks to technology advancements, they now automatically crop and brighten scans and recognize text nearly as well as their desktop counterparts. Traditional, standalone scanners are still useful, especially for: - Bulk-scanning large quantities of documents: Portable scanners and all-in-one printers with automated document feeders can simplify digitizing large stacks of paper. - Photographs: This includes printed pictures, slides, negatives, and archival copies of documents, where a flatbed scanner or a purpose-built photo scanner can capture high-resolution scans with far more accurate color. “Scanning apps...

are great when you do not intend to make archival images but simply need quick and convenient copies,” Joe Hoover, digital scanning technologist at the Minnesota Historical Society, said in a forum. Even when you’re capturing pages of a book for research, Cornell University Library’s archival research guide advises that to “quickly acquire text documents for research at a later time, your scanner app is probably the easiest way.” We agree. And that’s why we use mobile scanning apps for speed, even in an office with a desktop scanner nearby.

Why not just take a photo? Many people use their phone’s camera to take a snapshot of a receipt or a business card. It’s convenient and has become second nature to many. A photo is good enough for scanning receipts to include in expense reports or to quickly capture a restaurant menu or slides during a conference.

But using your camera to capture a clear, paper-like copy of a print document takes additional editing: cropping to the document edges, adjusting brightness to approximate a clean scan, and removing any tilt or skew. Exporting the scan as a PDF with OCR text requires additional apps and steps. Dedicated scanning apps take the tedium out of scanning. They recognize document edges and automatically crop to them, adjust for image skew, brighten documents to remove shadows and glare, recognize text automatically, and save all scanned pages together as a PDF.

Instead of wasting time editing each photo, you can typically scan and share multiple pages in under a minute. Since the best mobile scanning apps offer generous free plans, it’s worth the trouble of downloading an app and learning your way around it to quickly capture clear scans from your phone. How we picked and tested Since there’s a document scanning tool bundled with your phone, mobile scanning apps must be exceptional to warrant a download. In our experience, most of them are anything but.

The vast majority of mobile scanning apps offer basic scanning features, and they have intrusive ads and weekly subscriptions. For this guide, we focused on the following key features that together add up to a professional, streamlined scanning experience: - Automatic scanning: The best apps open directly to the camera interface, no taps needed to start scanning. They recognize the edges of your document and automatically scan, and they may let you scan multiple pages in a row.

Clear, sharp scans: These apps are optimized for clear photos of paper documents and make them as true to life as possible. Scans should appear bright white and have sharp text, with negligible shadow or glare. - Automatic corner detection and cropping: We looked for apps that crop cleanly to the edges of the document and adjust the scan to remove tilt, curvature, and other distortion. If the crop is off, editing features should let you re-crop the scan from the full, original photo.

Filters and editing tools: Ideally, the default output should require no tweaks, but we preferred apps that include tools to enhance brightness, remove defects, and adjust color with document-optimized filters. - Annotation tools: Whether you’re scanning and filling out paper forms on your phone or highlighting scanned books and research papers, annotation tools let you add text and digital ink to a scan. - Optical character recognition (OCR): Apps should automatically recognize text in scanned documents and save it as plain text in the exported PDF.

The best apps support multiple languages and let you edit scanned text. - Versatile export options: A scanner app should save scans as PDFs or images by default, with options to reorder scanned pages in PDFs. The best apps let you optimize PDFs, set image quality, and export in Word or text formats from extracted OCR text. You should also be able to send files to third-party apps or sync with popular cloud-storage services.

Clear, affordable pricing: Many apps push weekly or monthly subscriptions that are surprisingly expensive, or they include ads on every screen. By contrast, the best ones offer high-quality features for free, with clear pricing plans and limited ads. - Unique scanning features: Most apps are designed for scanning individual documents. For apps designed to scan photos or multiple pages at a time, we focused on their unique tools. We recommend using them alongside other apps focused on standard document scanning.

Based on the criteria above, we’ve tested more than 20 mobile scanning apps, on either an iPhone Pro or a Samsung Galaxy phone, in a variety of scenarios: - Studio test: We used LED lighting panels and a table covered with a black cloth to test each scanning app in optimal conditions. We scanned a number of documents, including a standard IRS 1099 tax form with sample handwriting, a handwritten note, a rebate form, two pages from a book, receipts, and photos.

Real-life test: We shot the same documents in a normal office setting, placing them at random on a wooden desk with both sunlight and interior lighting. - Speed test: We placed four documents side by side on a desk with natural lighting. Then we timed each app to see how long it would take to scan each document and export it as a PDF file. We rated each app’s ease of use, edge detection, clarity and scan quality, and scanning speed.

We tried alternate shooting modes, where available, and we tested cropping tools, filters, and annotations. We also exported each scan as a PDF, checked OCR text for accuracy, and tested other export options when possible. With the top contenders in hand, we looked at default scans from each app to compare edge detection, color, and clarity. Top pick: Adobe Scan for Android and iOS Top pick Free, fast, and full of features, this is the best app for scanning documents into clean PDFs.

If you want to quickly scan documents and export them as PDFs in under a minute, complete with OCR text, Adobe Scan (Android, iOS) is the mobile scanning app we recommend. It consistently delivers high-quality scans across a wide variety of document types and lighting environments. And its streamlined interface packs in a surprising variety of professional scanning and editing tools. It’s fast and simple to use. Adobe Scan opens directly to the camera interface.

Point your phone at a document, and Adobe Scan will detect the edges and then moments later show the scanned document on your screen. You can proceed to save the PDF or keep scanning to save multiple documents in a single PDF. And for most scans, Adobe Scan’s default settings are perfect, so no tweaking is needed. You can tweak scans individually or in bulk with editing tools. If a scan comes out wonky, though, you can always adjust the defaults if needed.

With the Crop tool, you can zoom out and see the whole picture to adjust the document edges. The Cleanup tool can remove fingers or smudges in the scan or replace the background color. And you can apply the brightness, contrast, filter, and resize tools individually or in bulk to all of your scanned pages. Use shooting modes to capture text anywhere. The Adobe Scan camera is optimized for documents by default, but it also includes modes for business and ID cards, whiteboards, and two-page book spreads.

The card mode is less likely to cut off the edges of a scanned ID, while the book mode can scan two pages at a time and adjust for curvature. Adobe Scan isn’t great at capturing photos, though; it produces over-bright, over-saturated results. Your camera app — or a dedicated photo scanning app, like Photomyne — will deliver higher image quality. Edit scanned documents with automatic OCR. Adobe Scan automatically recognizes typed text in 18 languages and saves it in exported PDFs with both free and paid plans.

In our testing, it was nearly perfect at recognizing typed text, all the way down to 6-point fonts. It can also search through the text of all of your scanned documents to quickly find an old scan. Adobe’s paid plan lets you change or delete any text on a scanned page. We found that it works well on typed documents with common fonts, like Times New Roman or Helvetica. It can also export scans as editable Microsoft Word documents. Annotate scans in the app or with Adobe Acrobat Reader.

You can highlight and draw on your scanned documents in your choice of digital ink color using Adobe Scan’s Markup tool. That’s enough to add a quick signature to a document. For more-detailed edits, the Fill & Sign button opens the free Adobe Acrobat Reader (Android, iOS) app, which allows you to tap anywhere to add an X or a dot or place a signature via Acrobat Document Cloud. We would have preferred more in-app annotation features, but the integration with Adobe Acrobat was seamless enough to still be useful.

Scans automatically sync to Adobe Acrobat. This lets you edit them on your Mac or PC, where you can share scanned PDFs and add basic annotations. You can set Adobe Scan to save scanned documents as images in your phone’s camera roll. You can also use the share and export features to send files to third-party apps. Or you can share them with an Adobe Cloud link. High-speed scanning makes short work of documents, but it requires a paid upgrade.

Adobe Scan’s paid plan includes a high-speed scanning feature to rapidly scan documents as you pan your camera across your desk. In our tests, it snapped and saved four pages in 30 seconds, versus around 37 seconds with the standard auto-detect mode. The finished scans were as sharp and clear as they were with the standard mode. Flaws but not dealbreakers It requires an account. You cannot scan documents or use any other app features without creating an Adobe account.

You can use an existing Creative Cloud or Acrobat account, or you can sign up with a new free account in around three taps in the app. You must dismiss a preview before scanning additional pages. By default, Adobe Scan shows a preview of your scan, where you can adjust the automatic crop and color of the document before saving or scanning additional pages. You can disable this by using the Premium high-speed shooting feature or by turning off the “Let me adjust borders after each scan” setting.

The default Auto-color filter can oversaturate colors. This was especially notable when we were scanning a form filled out with blue ink, since the areas around the handwriting would often have a blue sheen. Switching to the original color or increasing contrast removed that effect. OCR doesn’t work with handwriting. Adobe Scan’s OCR on typed text is impressively good, and its editing features are nearly perfect with common fonts. But it fails entirely with handwriting.

“Dear team” turned into “Oec.r {e_C<M),” while both Microsoft Word and Google Docs — along with the Google Cloud–powered OCR in vFlat — recognized the same handwriting correctly. Adobe Scan Premium is expensive. At $10 per month, the Premium plan is more expensive than most mobile scanning apps. The paid plan also comes bundled with both Adobe Acrobat Pro (starting at $20 per month) and Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps (from $60 per month), however. Best for scanning books: vFlat Best for...

This app lets you scan books into individual pages with fast snaps and automatic curve correction. But it doesn’t sync scans to the cloud, and it has fewer editing and annotation tools than our top pick. Most mobile scanning apps we tested could scan and save four pages in around 30 seconds. vFlat accomplished the same task in 17 seconds. vFlat opens to the camera and recognizes page edges nearly instantly, and it snaps clear scans with little distortion.

The app is similarly skilled in its 2 Pages mode, making it the best scanning app for frequently scanning pages of books. It scans in just seconds. Whereas other apps take a moment to recognize document edges and sharpen the finished scan, vFlat feels as fast at snapping a scan as a phone’s default Camera app is at taking a photo. Completed scans are incredibly clear, whether you’re shooting a single page or a two-page book spread, in nearly any lighting. It can capture multiple pages at once.

The 2 Pages mode is best for scanning books, with finished scans that look nearly as flat as a loose-leaf page. But the same mode works well for capturing two documents simultaneously. It saves each as a separate file and does a far better job of making each page appear flat than competing apps. It can automatically brighten, straighten, and remove fingers — or not. Most mobile scanner apps make all of the decisions for you via default settings.

vFlat’s defaults are very good; you’ll get clear, flat scans with distortion and stray fingers removed, without tweaking anything. But from the settings, you can disable color enhancement, text darkening, and auto-finger removal, as well as set your scan quality (high by default) and timer (to steady your phone between pressing the shutter and capturing the scan). You can choose which camera to use. Most apps scan using your phone’s default camera; it tends to have the highest resolution for the clearest scans.

vFlat uniquely includes an option to choose which camera to use for scans. Set it to use the wide lens to scan two-page spreads or the zoom lens to scan whiteboards. Its free limits reset each month. The free app offers unlimited one-page scans and image saves, but just 10 PDF exports with OCR and five two-page scans each month for free. That’s enough for occasional scans, and since it doesn’t have ads, even the free version is a nice scanning experience. Flaws but not dealbreakers OCR is not automated.

vFlat does not automatically recognize text in scans, but it does show a Recognize Text button on every scanned page that sends your scan to Google Cloud for text recognition. The OCR results are accurate for both typed and handwritten text, similar to what we saw from Google Docs, and they’re included in the PDF when you export. Scans are saved as individual pages. One thing that makes vFlat fast is that each page is saved directly to the app, no preview required.

To export a PDF with multiple pages, you need to go to the app’s library, select the required pages, and then export the completed file. It has relatively few annotation features. You can crop the scan more than the default, but you cannot see the full, original photo to expand the scanned area. And there’s just one annotation feature: Signature. Any other adjustments require exporting your scanned documents to another app. Scans aren’t synced.

However, you can choose to have scans saved to your phone’s photo library, where they could be automatically backed up to iCloud or Google Photos. PDFs need to be compiled and then exported to your cloud-storage service of choice. Best for scanning photos: Photomyne Best for... Take a single scan of a page full of pictures or business cards to save each photo individually. This app lacks OCR, so it’s not a good choice for scanning pages of text. Need to scan photos to your phone?

Photomyne is the only app we tested that can scan multiple photos or business cards in a single snap and then crop and save each photo individually. It’s also the only mobile scanning app that saves nearly natural-looking photos, without glare, oversaturation, or washed-out brightness. You’ll get better photo scans from a dedicated flatbed scanner, but Photomyne is your next best option for a quick, clear backup of your printed photos. It’s built for photos.

Instead of brightening the shot for a clean white background, as most mobile scanning apps do, Photomyne opts for the most neutral brightness and color saturation. It includes modes to scan photos, negatives, slides, scrapbooks, and artwork. Instead of automatically shooting, Photomyne has you press and hold the shutter button for three seconds to capture a clear shot. It can scan individual pictures or a whole photo album.

The default Photos mode can recognize and save each picture on a page individually, while the Scrapbook mode snaps the entire page as a single image. After shooting, Photomyne automatically straightens, crops, and sharpens photos before saving them to your library. It saves the original photo alongside the cropped scan, and you can zoom out from the auto-cropped scan to include notes or other details surrounding the picture that otherwise get automatically cropped out. You can save additional details about a photo.

Photomyne includes a “What’s the story of this photo?” prompt under each image, and it recognizes faces, so you can put a name to the person. You can also add a date and location or use a built-in Google Gemini integration to recognize outdoor locations and approximate when the photo was taken. And there’s an option to snap the back of a photograph (to preserve handwritten notes and processing details) or to record a voice caption (to preserve a loved one’s story about a photo). It has photo filters.

The default image straightening and sharpening filters do a surprisingly good job of making scanned photos look like their original print copy, especially for older photos shot on film. Additional filters let you restore and enhance photos or make them cooler or warmer. Photomyne can also colorize black-and-white photos for free. Flaws but not dealbreakers Most features require a paid account. You can use Photomyne for free to scan photos, business cards, and whole photo album pages in bulk, but it will regularly bug you to upgrade.

If you want to scan a large number of photos, we recommend upgrading to a paid plan for a month and then downgrading if you no longer need to regularly scan pictures. Free exports are limited to Google Photos. Saving photos to your phone’s photo library, emailing photos, or sharing them in other apps all require a paid Photomyne account. Even with a paid account, Photomyne has no options to sync photos to another app automatically. It does, however, include a free Google Photos integration.

Tap Share in an album, select the photos you want, then choose Save to Google Photos to export your scans for free. It’s not great for scanning documents. The very features that make Photomyne better at scanning photos — more-accurate colors, less brightness enhancement, and a focus on image export options without any PDF or annotation tools — make it a worse option for scanning documents. Its image quality is still limited compared with that of dedicated scanners.

An individual picture cropped from a six-image photo album was only 1.5 megapixels — hardly archival quality but still surprisingly clear considering the size. A dedicated scanner, or scanning photos individually on your phone, will give higher-quality scans. Other scanning apps worth considering: The app that comes with your phone If you have an iPhone or iPad: Apple Notes includes a quick scanner feature to automatically snap pages, save them as a PDF file in a new note, and annotate scans with on-screen marker and signature tools.

There are two ways to jump into the scanner mode. Press the paper clip icon in a note and then tap Scan Documents. Or press and hold the Apple Notes icon on your home screen, and then tap Scan Documents to jump straight into the camera. All iPhones since the iPhone XS running iOS 15 or later can recognize text in images and PDFs, scanned documents included. Apple Notes uses that feature to search through recognized text and to name your note.

It also has a unique scanning mode — Scan Text — to directly copy text from a document without saving the full scan. Apple Notes does not, however, save recognized text to exported PDF files, nor does it include other filters or shooting modes. If you use an Android device: Google Drive and Files by Google are often preinstalled on Android devices, and they are free to download if not. Both include a scanner button above the + button to add files, with identical scanning features.

It automatically recognizes the edges of documents; includes basic filters, cleanup, and editing tools; and saves multipage scans to a single PDF. Google Drive automatically uploads scanned documents to your Google Drive account, while Files by Google saves scanned documents locally to your phone. Neither app includes OCR, but you can open scanned PDFs from any app in Google Docs to recognize text — including highly accurate handwriting recognition. Google Drive is also available on iOS, with more-basic scanning features.

The competition This is not a comprehensive list of all the scanning apps we’ve tested. We have removed ones that are discontinued or no longer meet our criteria. Microsoft Lens (Android, iOS), a former pick, is free, snaps clear scans automatically with good edge detection, and does not require an account. It doesn’t include OCR, but it can export documents to Microsoft Word for decent text recognition and editing. It’s somewhat slower at scanning documents than the competition, and it shoots darker, less-clear scans.

It also requires more taps to save and share PDF files after scanning. SwiftScan (Android, iOS), a former upgrade pick, can upload scans to more than a dozen cloud services (or your own FTP server) with a $60-per-year subscription. It had more trouble detecting document edges than other apps. Also, the free version shoots only two pages per scan and shows ads even in the shooting screen.

Abbyy FineReader (called Capture Documents on Android and FineReader on iOS) can scan three multipage documents for free, and then it costs $6 per month or $21 per year for unlimited scanning, OCR, and cloud sync. It offers a less accurate on-device OCR or a higher-quality cloud OCR, which took around three minutes for a four-page scan. It doesn’t offer scanning modes, but it is fast and accurate at detecting the edges of documents.

Scan Plus (Android, iOS) was slower at scanning documents, and the finished images were not as sharp as the competition’s. It’s free, supported with in-app links to paid signature and fax apps from the same developers. It also has a number of AI tools, including a reasonably accurate tool to remove fingers from scans and an “AI Image to Text” button to recognize text on-device without saving the OCR text to the PDF. CamScanner (Android, iOS) has had a troubled history involving Chinese malware.

Its interface is overly busy, with ads for other apps from the CamScanner team, plus several scanning modes that seem to be of limited usefulness (stuff like question sets, an ID photo maker, and QR codes). Clear Scan (Android, iOS) has a less polished user interface than our picks. It displays constant ads, and while it can auto-shoot scans, you have to approve every shot, and it feels slower than other apps. Dropbox (Android, iOS) includes a built-in scanner feature to scan PDFs to your Dropbox account for free.

It scans black-and-white images by default; you have to switch to Original or Whiteboard filters after shooting to restore color. It was the slowest scanning app we tested, and it doesn’t include OCR or annotation features. Evernote Scannable is free, has a simple design, and produces good-looking scans quickly — as fast as Adobe Scan’s high-speed scanning mode.

But it has some odd limitations: It’s iOS only, it’s less accurate at capturing smaller documents like business cards, it doesn’t include OCR, and it stores scans on your device for only 30 days before they’re automatically deleted. Genius Scan (Android, iOS) is simple and free, but it isn’t as polished as our picks. It doesn’t automatically open to the camera, and the user interface doesn’t rotate when shooting in landscape orientation.

It does not do OCR scans by default, so you have to press a separate button to recognize text per page. Search within OCR results was hit or miss. OCR, sync, cloud storage, and more require a $40 annual subscription. iScanner (Android, iOS) was among the slowest scanner apps we tested, requiring more taps than any other app to scan and save documents. It also shows frequent, difficult-to-dismiss pop-over ads, and it costs $5 per week or $21 per year for paid plans.

Mobile Scanner (Android, iOS) repeatedly pushes its $4-per-week, $40-per-year, or $100 lifetime subscriptions throughout the app, making it difficult to use the app’s free scanning features. The free app can scan only single documents at a time, and exported PDFs are watermarked. Its scans were also less sharp than those of the competition. Notebloc (Android, iOS) is a free, ad-supported scanner app (with a $1 monthly subscription or a $24 one-time fee to remove ads) geared toward students and teachers.

It is more bare-bones than most other apps, does not automatically detect documents when shooting, and is worse at auto-cropping and OCR than other apps. It also centers the scan on a standard, letter-size document instead of exporting the scanned document’s original dimensions. Open Scanner (iOS only) is a free, open-source scanning app built around privacy. It includes the same iOS annotation features as Apple Notes. It recognizes scanned text in the app, but it does not include the OCR text in exported PDFs.

It also overexposed documents in bright environments. We previously tested and dismissed two other iOS-only apps. Prizmo pauses a moment while scanning each page, struggles with scanning books and skewed documents, and requires you to manually run OCR on each scan. Scanner Pro offers lots of scanning modes, including presets for receipts, invoices, forms, letters, IDs, business cards, sheet music, and more. It can send faxes for $1 each, and it can generate automated expense reports from receipts with the $30 annual plan.

PDF exports are watermarked with the free plan. Scan Hero (Android, iOS) offers poor edge detection in scans, and when you first open the app, it guides you into an $8-per-week trial, which is far more expensive than any other scanning app. This article was edited by Ben Keough and Erica Ogg. Meet your guide Matthew Guay is a writer focused on software and productivity. Previously he was a writer for the automation platform Zapier and a founding editor of the software community Capiche.

With more than 1,500 logins in his password manager, he has lost track of how much software he has tested. Further reading The Best Cheap Scanner by Ben Keough and Phil Ryan We think the Canon CanoScan LiDE 300 is the best for high-resolution scans of delicate or thick items. The Best Portable Document Scanner by Phil Ryan The Brother ADS-1350W is the best portable scanner you can get thanks to its high speed, great image quality, Wi-Fi connectivity, and easy-to-use software.

The Best Tech and Apps for Your Home Office by Ben Keough We’ve collected our favorite picks—from dozens of guides and hundreds of hours of research and testing—to make your home office more productive and comfortable.What a Wirecutter Home-Office Expert Uses to Organize Her Desk by Melanie Pinola Velcro strips, a glass easel, and a desk pad are just a few of the things our productivity expert uses to get through each workday. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

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