7 Best Free Android Scanner Apps for Scanning Docs, PDFs, and Photos in 2023

This article focuses on the best Android scanner apps because many people own an Android smartphone. These apps can turn your Android phone into a scanner, and you will be able to scan any paper document, business card, or photo with your phone.

Whether you need to scan a document for work or just want to preserve memories by scanning old photos and documents, this article will show you the best free scanner apps available in the Google Play Store.

Best Free Android Scanner Apps

You don’t have to run after an Internet cafe every single time you get to scan something or invest your hard-earned money on buying a document scanner. You can literally use your Android smartphone to comfortably scan all your documents at home for absolutely free. Yes, you heard me right! The camera on your smartphone can outperform most typical desktop scanners on the market.

There are many applications available for your Android smartphone that do the task. Some of which are feature-rich, while the rest are crappy pieces of software. Well, the real challenge is to pick the right fit for all your mobile scanning needs. Worry not! To help you make the best scanner out of your Smartphone, we have curated the Best Android Scanner Applications list here

Top Free Android Scanning Apps for 2023

1. Adobe Scan
2. Office Lens (Microsoft Owned)
3. Cam Scanner
4. Fast Scanner
5. Clear Scan
6. Scanbot
7. vFlat Scanner

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Please do note that each application that we have cited here is personally tested by putting it through a series of tests to come up with an opinion. Make sure to read to the end of the post to decide which application best suits your needs. Also, do check for an exclusive expert tip at the end of the post.

The first app on our list is Adobe Scan, which is a reliable scanner app that is available only on Android devices. It’s easy to use and has great features like batch scanning, sending scans as PDFs or JPEGs, etc.

The next one is Office Lens, which allows users to capture documents, whiteboards, and business cards with the camera of their smartphone. It provides editing features such as cropping and taking out shadows, etc.

The third one is CamScanner, which also has editing features along with other functions like optical character recognition.

#1. Adobe Scan: OCR PDF and Business Card Scanner

When we think of a document, the first thing that comes to our mind is Adobe. Adobe has been very creative in making a lot of great software tools in many different areas. Adobe PDF Reader, for instance, is one such masterpiece that is being used by millions and millions of people across the globe. With the same kind of innovation, Adobe has come up with a nifty piece of android software called the Adobe Scan which has a whopping download of over 10 million on the play store.

The Adobe Scan app for Android comes with a different setting for each type of document. Be it a whiteboard, business card, form or plain document, Adobe has it all. With the preset, you don’t have to make manual adjustments to your scans. The app does it all for you, provided you let the app know about the type of document that you are going to scan. Cool! Isn’t it? The game doesn’t end here.

It is equipped with an Optical Scanning Recognition (OCR) feature that lets you detect and extract the text from your scans. It comes in handy while scanning documents like business cards that contain important data. Another cool feature is that the scans can be directly saved to Adobe’s cloud storage and can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

#2. Office Lens: Microsoft PDF Scanner

I don’t think I need to introduce you to the Microsoft eco-system as there are many products on the market that speak volumes about it. Microsoft has contributed a lot to the documentation industry with its revolutionary Office suite, which is still the best set of applications for creating and editing documents online.

Even before Android reached the milestone of being the most used operating system in the world, Microsoft had expanded its wings to include Android and developed a whole bunch of tools for the platform. Out of those, Microsoft Office Lens turned out to be the most adored Android scanning application with over 10 million downloads on the Play Store.

It offers pretty much everything a typical user looks for in a portable document scanner application. Like the Adobe Scan, the Office Lens has also got a whole bunch of presets for different forms of documents. It also offers various cloud storage options like OneNote and OneDrive. With OCR, scanning and getting information from different kinds of documents is now a breeze.

#3. Cam Scanner-Best Scanner to Scan PDFs & Docs

I bet each one of us has already heard the name Cam Scanner once in our digital journey so far. Cam Scanner is an age-old application that has been on the Play Store right from the start of the Android era. Being a senior player in the industry, it has evolved through a lot of challenges.

It is installed on over 380 million devices in over 200 countries around the world and is featured in many digital magazines. Enough with the boasting! Let us understand its technicalities. The application employs a special image cropping algorithm to precisely detect and crop the scanned images. It also boasts its OCR feature to read and extract text from scanned documents. To use the OCR feature, however, you need a paid subscription to the application.

Scanning, exporting, and printing are made easy. The sync feature enables users to access the documents easily from different platforms. Documents can be protected with passwords to secure them from unauthorized access while sharing them on public platforms.

#4. Fast Scanner: Free PDF Scan

With over 10 million Android users, Fast Scanner is one of the most popular android scanning applications on the Play store. As the name says, it is fast and super easy to scan a document. Just open the application and point to a document to be scanned. Ta-da! The scanned documents can be exported to an image or pdf format.

There is an option included for uploading the scanned documents to third-party cloud storage like Google Drive or OneDrive.

#5. Clear Scan: Free PDF & Document Scanner App

Clear Scan is yet another decent scanner application on the Play Store with over 5 million installs. What makes this scanner noteworthy is its ability to scan multiple documents and export options. In spite of being lighter and simpler, it is very productive.

It also offers an OCR feature for easier extraction of text from scanned documents. The filters, editing ability, manual page sizes, and backing up and restoring of app data are a few of the other highlights of the app. All in all, a decent application with a minimalistic user interface.

#6. Scanbot – PDF Document Scanner

Scanbot is a free application for Android that scans documents, pictures, and PDF files. Scanbot offers features that many other applications do not. It is one of the best PDF document scanner apps available on the Google Play Store. This is due to its wide range of features and ability to convert documents into multiple formats like.docx, .pptx, .txt, HTML and more.

I’m kind of impressed with the design and user interface of Scanbot. It is a simple yet effective program on the Play Store with over 1 million downloads and has a pretty decent user rating and feedback.

Apart from the basic features that most scanners offer in their lineup, Scanbot is a step ahead by including features like QR Code scanning and Bar Code scanning. It also supports various cloud services, from the most common ones to lesser-known ones.

#7. vFlat- Your mobile book scanner

Yet another mobile scanner with a minimalistic design. vFlat makes your scanning super easy. As its name suggests, it is meant to scan large amounts of paper, like books. From my first impression using this application, I felt it was easy to use and faster in scanning, but the scanning and processing quality could have been better.

It is evolving with every update. The developers of this application are trying to make it more interactive and productive. However, give this application a try. You might possibly like it.

Also Read: Best Negative Scanner in 2023

Expert Tip 1

Most of us have the Google Drive app on our phones, either because it came with our phones or because we downloaded it ourselves. Did you know that Google Drive can be used to scan your documents?

Yes! You can use the Google Drive application to scan your documents at times when you need to quickly scan something.

To scan using the Google Drive Application, open Google Drive and click on the + symbol at the bottom of the screen. You should find a Scan option from the bunch of options. Click on it. Ta-da! You’re good to go.

Expert Tip 2

You can use PhotoScan by Google Photos, which is again a minimal application from Google that lets you scan your old photos or even your ID cards without losing their quality.

Also Read: Best Photo Scanner with Auto Feeder

FAQs: The Best Free Android Mobile Scanners for PDF, Doc, and Photos