5 Best Popular CamScanner Alternative for Mobile and Web

Why CamScanner alternative?

We are comparing and listing 5 best and popular CamScanner alternative applications/software for mobile (Android/iOS) and web. CamScanner is an excellent application for OCR, Document Scanning, and PDF Scanning, but in the year 2019, it was banned (introduced again after code modifications) by Google Play Store for malicious code, and recently in June 2020 has been banned by India for national security. We will explore other CamScanner alternatives that you can use for OCR (Optical Character Recognition), document scanning, PDF scanning, and share scanned documents with others or export them in different formats.

1. Microsoft Office Lens
2. Adobe Scan
3. Google Drive
4. Abbyy FineScanner AI
5. Scan Pro from Maple Media

We’ll compare these above CamScanner alternatives (OCR software/apps, Document Scanner, PDF Scanner) on usability, option to connect to cloud storage, scanned image quality, OCR functionality, sharing options, security and price. All the above CamScanner alternative applications/software are available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

Microsoft Office Lens

Microsoft Office Lens is an excellent option for scanning documents, PDF, and performing OCR operations. If you are already using Microsoft Ecosystem of Office apps and OneDrive, Microsoft Office Lens automatically uploads the document to your OneDrive if you select, thus providing better user experience. It also scans whiteboard, documents, business cards. You have the option to scan a physical document as well as items stored on your mobile phone. This is in addition to standard features like auto edge detection, rotation, batch processing, different filters, text overlay and colored pen notes of Document/PDF scanning apps.

Features

• User Experience: Best
• Detection: Good
• Sync to Cloud: OneNote and OneDrive
• OCR: Export to Word document using OCR
• Price: Free to use
• Batch Processing: Yes
• Image Processing: No
• Availability:
  • Google Play Store
  • Apple Play Store
  • Microsoft Store

Adobe Scan

If you love Adobe products, then this app is the best app. This app will turn your mobile into a powerful PDF scanner and OCR functionality. This mobile document scanner can scan whiteboard, documents, notes, business cards and photos, though it supports only in JPG or PDF file format while exporting. When I reviewed this app, it had some issues with edge detection and sometimes it’s difficult to select document edges. But, once it detects and scans, the scanned image/document is of the best quality.

One of the special feature of this app is that you can select different document page size like A3, A4, Letter etc. It also allows you to instantly save scanned business cards to your contacts.

Features

• User Experience: Good
• Detection: Good
• Sync to Cloud: Adobe Cloud
• OCR: Available
• Price: Free to use with In-App purchase
• Batch Processing: Yes
• Image Processing: Yes
• Availability:
  • Google Play Store
  • Apple Play Store

Google Drive

Google Drive has a difficult to notice feature to scan documents. It is inbuilt into the Google Drive app for Android and iOS. It is visible when you click on the ‘+’ icon in the bottom right corner to create new items. When you click on ‘Scan’, Google Drive launches the default camera app of the phone integrated fully within Google Drive to scan. Once you scan, it provides the option to crop, rotate and apply few limited filters. You can scan multiple documents in one go.

Google Scan feature doesn’t provide the option to select existing files for scanning into PDF. This document scanner is completely integrated into Google Drive, thus providing a consistent Google experience. Despite having only basic features, this is a handy and quick Document Scanner tool.

Features

• User Experience: Satisfactory
• Detection: Basic
• Sync to Cloud: Google Drive
• OCR: No
• Price: Free to use
• Batch Processing: Yes
• Image Processing: Yes
• Availability:
  • Google Play Store
  • Apple Play Store

Abbyy FineScanner AI

This is a premium Document Scanner and PDF Scanner for books. Abbyy FineScanner AI can scan any handwritten notes as well as printed documents. You can export the scans in the form of JPG and PDF. The free version is limited to scan up to 100 pages per document.

To get all the features, you need to purchase a subscription.

It has a special BookScan mode which has an auto edge detection and auto snap feature. This mode automatically identifies edges and takes snaps without the press of a button. To reduce the time to scan a book, it splits the facing book pages into two separate images, thus processing two pages at a time. Abbyy FineScanner AI also supports 193 languages and 12 different formats to extract texts from scanned documents. It also provides an annotation feature to capture your notes on the scanned documents. Multiple export options are available with sync to the cloud including DropBox, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive and more.

Features

• User Experience: Excellent
• Detection: Excellent
• Sync to Cloud: Multiple
• OCR: Available
• Price: Free to use with In-App purchase
• Batch Processing: Yes
• Image Processing: Yes
• Availability:
  • Google Play Store
  • Apple Play Store

Scan Pro from Maple Media

Scan Pro App is another premium Document and PDF scanner. It supports all kinds of documents to scan like receipts, whiteboards, business cards, documents. In addition to scanning documents and PDFs, it also supports scanning of QR Code and Barcode. It is very fast as it has an auto document detection feature that detects and takes a snap at the appropriate time. It supports multi-page scanning and export to PDF or JPG file format.

Scan Pro app supports multiple cloud sync and sharing options. It has a cutting-edge OCR for Text Recognition, full-text search, and fax sending feature. You can also annotate your scanned documents within this app.

To get all the Pro features, you need to purchase a subscription.

Features

• User Experience: Excellent
• Detection: Excellent
• Sync to Cloud: Multiple
• OCR: Yes
• Price: Free to use with In-App purchase
• Batch Processing: Yes
• Image Processing: Yes
• Availability:
  • Google Play Store
  • Apple Play Store

Which CamScanner Alternative will you choose?

So, after reading this, you must be deciding which CamScanner alternative you will choose. It depends on what will be your usage and to what ecosystem you are tied in.

The first three CamScanner alternatives – Microsoft Office Lens, Adobe Scan, Google Drive provide all the features required and are powerful enough for common and regular use. These are also free to use with all their features included. If you are a heavy user who scans books or multiple page documents frequently, you can try Abbyy FineScanner AI and Scan Pro App as the premium CamScanner alternatives. These provide professional quality Document Scanner and PDF scanner features though with a subscription price.

The best CamScanner alternative for common and regular use in our opinion is Microsoft Office Lens, which provides most of the features comparable to CamScanner (and that too free). Let me now, what choice you make int he comments section below.

This article first appeared in DigitalYY.com blog.