A Genius Scan alternative with free OCR and sharing

Genius Scan is good. So why look elsewhere?

Credit where it is due: Genius Scan's free tier offers unlimited scans at full resolution with no watermark, runs on-device, and shows no ads. That is better than a lot of the category.

Where people start looking around is the paid line. In our research, text recognition (OCR) and searchable PDFs, the app lock and exports to most cloud services sit in the paid tiers, and the iOS listing marks email as the free export. Some recent reviewers also describe a trial prompt that appears when they try to export or share. At the time of writing, Genius Scan Ultra is $39.99 a year.

Scanfone draws the line somewhere else: OCR, sharing to any app, the locked folder and the PDF tools are all free.

Scanfone vs Genius Scan at a glance

Genius Scan details are from its developer pricing page, US App Store listing and recent reviews at the time of writing, and may change.

What you get free in Scanfone that is paid elsewhere

• OCR and search: every page is recognized on your iPhone, PDFs become searchable and you can copy text. See OCR text recognition.
• Share anywhere: the iOS share sheet, print, AirDrop or save to Files, with no prompt in the way.
• Safe folder: a locked folder protected by a PIN and Face ID.
• PDF tools: sign, add text, watermark, page numbers, redact, merge, split and compress.
• Conversions: PDF to JPG, PDF to text and JPG to PDF.
• Scan modes: documents, ID card with front and back on one page, passport and QR code.

Where Genius Scan goes further

Being fair matters here. Genius Scan offers things Scanfone does not, such as smart renaming templates, automatic export rules to services like Dropbox or WebDAV, and team licences. If those are central to how you work, Genius Scan's paid tiers may be worth it to you.

Scanfone is simpler on purpose. It is for people who scan a few documents a week, want them searchable and shareable, and do not want to think about tiers.

The honest catch

Scanfone's free PDFs carry one small line under each page: "Scanned free with Scanfone". It is a footer, not a watermark over the content.

Scanfone Pro removes the line and adds sync between your phones, a 1 TB cloud backup on EU servers, and Word and PowerPoint export. It costs $2.99 for the first year, then $19.99 a year. No weekly plans, cancel in one tap. See pricing.

Privacy on both sides

Genius Scan and Scanfone both process scans on the device, which is good news either way. In Scanfone, nothing is uploaded unless you turn on Pro sync, and there are no ads, tracking or analytics. More on our privacy page.

Try it on your next scan

The easiest test: scan the same multi-page document in both apps, then try to search for a word inside it and share it to the app you actually use. Then decide. If you want a bigger picture first, read our best free scanner app comparison.