A Scanner Pro alternative with free OCR and no weekly plan

Why people look for a Scanner Pro alternative

Scanner Pro by Readdle has been on the App Store for many years, and long-time users often praise how quickly it crops, saves and uploads a scan. Over time the app moved from a one-off purchase to a subscription called Scanner Pro Plus. Recent App Store reviews mention a few recurring frustrations: free scans carrying a watermark, upgrade screens appearing mid-scan, and a 1-week plan that some people did not notice was renewing every week.

None of that makes Scanner Pro a bad app. It does mean that if you mainly want to scan a document, read its text and send it, you may be paying for features you never use. That is the gap Scanfone is built for: the everyday scanning job is free, and the paid plan only adds things you need when you own more than one phone.

Scanner Pro vs Scanfone at a glance

Competitor details are from the US App Store listing, Readdle's help center and recent App Store reviews, checked at the time of writing (November 2026). Prices and plans can change, so check the App Store before you buy anything.

What Scanfone does for free

Scanfone uses Apple's document camera, so edges are found and perspective is straightened the moment you point your iPhone at a page. You can then do everything people usually need, without hitting a paywall:

• Unlimited multi-page PDF scans, plus importing photos and PDFs you already have.
• Filters (Original, Color, Gray, Black & white), rotate, reorder and delete pages.
• On-device text recognition that makes PDFs searchable and lets you copy text out of a scan.
• Search across all your documents, including the text inside them, and keep them in folders.
• Sign a PDF with a saved signature, add text, page numbers or a watermark of your own.
• Merge, split and compress PDFs, redact areas, convert PDF to JPG or text.
• Dedicated modes for an ID card (front and back on one page), passports and QR codes.
• A Safe folder locked with a PIN and Face ID.

Where Scanner Pro has extras

To be fair, Scanner Pro offers things Scanfone does not try to do. Its Plus plan lists auto-upload to cloud services such as Dropbox and Google Drive, Smart Workflows that chain several actions into one tap, PDF translation, a measuring mode and object counting, plus fax credits sold separately. If those are central to how you work, Scanner Pro may well be worth its price for you.

Scanfone keeps a narrower focus: scan, read, edit and share PDFs, with the core of that free. Exporting to Word or PowerPoint is the one conversion that sits in Pro, alongside sync and cloud backup.

What Scanfone Pro costs, and what it adds

Scanfone Pro is an App Store subscription at $2.99 for the first year, then $19.99 a year. There is no weekly plan and no monthly plan to trip over, and you cancel in one tap. Pro adds sync between your phones, a 1 TB cloud backup on EU servers, PDFs without the footer line, and PDF to Word and PowerPoint export.

There is no email or password account. The App Store purchase is the account, and other phones join with a one-time code. Read the full breakdown on the pricing page.

Privacy: what stays on your phone

Scanning and text recognition happen on the iPhone itself. Nothing is uploaded unless you switch on Pro sync, and Scanfone has no ads, no tracking and no analytics. If you scan tax forms, contracts or IDs, that matters. More on our privacy page.

How to switch from Scanner Pro

1. Export the scans you want to keep from Scanner Pro as PDFs to the Files app.
2. Install Scanfone from the App Store. No sign-up screen.
3. Import those PDFs into Scanfone; text recognition makes them searchable.
4. Sort them into folders, and put sensitive ones in the Safe.
5. If you subscribed to Scanner Pro Plus and no longer need it, cancel it in your App Store subscriptions.

Other comparisons and tools

Scanner Pro, Tiny Scanner, TurboScan, Adobe Scan, CamScanner, Genius Scan, iScanner and Apple Notes are trademarks of their respective owners. Scanfone is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any of them.