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Privacy-first document scanning for iPhone. Free to start, no app account required.
A privacy-first document scanner for iPhone, built by a small team that believes your documents should stay yours.
Most document scanner apps treat your private documents as data to be uploaded, processed, and sometimes monetized. We don't think that's right. ScanLens was built around a simple idea: scanning a passport, a contract, or a medical record should not require trusting a third-party server with your information. That principle shapes everything from the document scanner itself to the on-device OCR engine and the way we describe pricing.
Every core scanning operation in ScanLens runs on-device using Apple's Neural Engine and Vision framework. Documents only leave your iPhone when you explicitly choose to share them or sync them to a cloud service you control. The technical details are documented in our Privacy Policy.
It's a fair question, and one we asked ourselves before writing a line of code. iOS already includes document scanning inside the Notes app, the Files app, and the Camera app's Live Text feature. For grabbing a receipt or capturing a single page, the built-in tools are good — Apple's edge detection and perspective correction are excellent, and the integration with iCloud is seamless.
The honest answer to "why build a separate scanner" is that built-in scanning is optimized for quick captures, not for documents that need to be processed, organized, signed, exported, or searched later. The gaps we kept running into:
The deeper reason, though, is privacy posture. When you scan an identity document, a contract, a tax return, or a medical record, the question of where that scan is processed matters. iOS's built-in scanning is already on-device, which is good. The issue starts when you reach for OCR, signing, or sync — at which point many third-party scanner apps route the document through their own servers. ScanLens exists in part to keep that workflow local end-to-end: capture, OCR, annotation, signature, and export all happen on the iPhone, and cloud sync only fires when you explicitly send a document to your iCloud, Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive. We describe the full workflow on our iPhone scanning guide.
A small product team can't out-feature the biggest scanner apps on every checkbox. What we can do is be deliberate about which decisions get made for the user, which get exposed as choices, and which we refuse to compromise on.
Every capability we ship has to work without a network round-trip for the document itself. We use Apple's Vision framework and the Neural Engine because it lets us run edge detection, perspective correction, OCR, and image enhancement locally on the iPhone. If a feature can't be built on-device, we either find another way or we don't ship it. This is also why we don't run a "cloud OCR for better accuracy" toggle — the entire architecture is local.
You can install ScanLens, scan, OCR, annotate, sign, and export without ever creating a ScanLens account. There is no sign-up wall on launch, no email gate on the first scan, and no "log in to continue" prompt buried in the settings. Cloud sync uses your existing accounts (iCloud, Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive) rather than a ScanLens-hosted backend.
When we describe features on the site or in the App Store listing, we lead with what the feature does, not which plan unlocks it. Scanning, ID and passport modes, crop/rotate/filters, and PDF/JPG/PNG export are free. The paid tier adds the heavier workflow — OCR at scale across 50+ languages, e-signatures, merge/split, searchable and password-protected PDFs, cloud sync, smart folders, and workflow automation — because those are the parts that take ongoing engineering work to keep accurate and current. Specifics live on the pricing page.
Subscriptions aren't right for everyone, and we don't want to be the app that takes monthly rent for a tool you only use occasionally. The lifetime purchase exists because a paperless workflow is a long-term thing, and some users want a one-time price for a long-term tool. We've kept the option even though monthly and yearly are simpler to run.
ScanLens is developed by BITFORGE PTE. LTD., a private company registered in Singapore. We are a small, independent software team focused on building useful iOS apps that respect user privacy.
We are not venture-backed, we don't sell user data, and we don't run ads inside the app. ScanLens is funded entirely by users who choose to upgrade their plan or buy a lifetime license.
We don't publish a public org chart, and we'd rather under-claim headcount than inflate it. The honest description is: a small product team handles iOS engineering, design, the marketing site, and customer support, with the same people often wearing more than one hat. Singapore is the registered office and the centre of gravity for the work. When a decision needs to be made — should this feature run on-device, should this metric be collected, should this experiment ship — it gets made by the people actually writing the code, not by a separate growth or analytics team operating on different incentives.
ScanLens is currently our only public product. It is a native iPhone document scanner with the following capabilities:
The app requires iOS 17.4 or later and is designed for iPhone first, with iPad support.
On-device processing is not an opt-in privacy upgrade. It is how the entire app is built. There is no cloud OCR option that quietly uploads your documents for "better accuracy." Recognition runs locally.
You can install ScanLens and use the core app without ever creating a ScanLens account. We do not run ads inside the app, and our document processing workflow is not built around uploading scans to our servers. We do use basic website analytics on scanlens.io to understand site traffic, but that is separate from how scanned documents are handled inside the app.
The free download is genuinely useful. Paid plans exist because building, testing, and supporting the app costs money — not because we want to gate basic functionality. The lifetime option exists because subscriptions are not for everyone, and we want users to have a non-recurring choice.
We do not buy fake reviews, we do not invent user counts, and we do not claim ratings we have not earned. If you see a number on this site, it represents something real.
Alex Green is a software developer and privacy-focused paperless workflow practitioner who writes the ScanLens blog. Alex has been working with document scanning workflows, OCR pipelines, and cloud document archives since 2017, with a professional background in mobile development and data protection on iOS. Alex works directly with the BITFORGE engineering team in Singapore that builds ScanLens, and personally reviews every blog post for technical accuracy, source citations, and factual correctness before publishing.
Editorial approach: posts on tax, legal, or compliance topics are reviewed against primary sources (IRS publications, Revenue Procedures, EU regulations like eIDAS, and official guidance from the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act in the US). Posts are not written to sell ScanLens — they are written to be useful regardless of which scanner app the reader uses. Our bias is disclosed on every comparison page and we take corrections seriously.
Reach out with feedback, corrections, or questions via the contact form. Corrections get priority and are reflected in the post within a day. For editorial or expert-quote requests, use the same form and mention "editorial" in the subject.
For support, feedback, partnership inquiries, or press requests, use our contact form. We review every message and reply as quickly as we can.
For privacy-specific questions, see our Privacy Policy. For terms of use, see our Terms of Service.
ScanLens was born from a specific frustration: existing scanner apps either required accounts, uploaded documents to external servers, or were loaded with ads. Some did all three. We tried many of them — apps that wanted access to our contacts for no clear reason, apps that routed OCR through remote servers with vague data-retention policies, apps that inserted watermarks on free scans to pressure upgrades. None of them felt right for scanning a lease agreement, a medical form, or a passport.
We wanted a scanner that processes everything on-device, does not require sign-up, and treats your documents as none of our business. So we built one. Development started in late 2025, and ScanLens launched on the App Store in early 2026. The result is the iPhone document scanner described elsewhere on this site, with the practical workflow walked through step-by-step on the scanning guide.
The app is built by BITFORGE PTE. LTD., a software company registered in Singapore. We are a small, independent team. There is no parent company, no external investors dictating product decisions, and no pressure to monetize user data. The people who build ScanLens are the same people who decide what it does and does not do.
Our goal was not to build the scanner app with the most features. It was to build the one you can trust with sensitive documents — and then make it genuinely good at scanning too.
Privacy claims are common in app marketing. What matters is the technical architecture behind them. Here is how ScanLens is actually built, and why each decision matters for the security of your documents:
Every core operation — scanning, edge detection, perspective correction, OCR text recognition, and image enhancement — runs locally on your iPhone using Apple's Neural Engine and Vision framework. Your documents never touch our servers during scanning or OCR. This is not a privacy toggle you can enable; it is the only way the app works. There is no cloud OCR fallback. The benefit is straightforward: if your documents never leave your device during processing, they cannot be intercepted, stored, or leaked by a third party during that process.
ScanLens does not require you to create an account. You can install the app and use every scanning feature without providing an email address, phone number, or any other personal information. From a security perspective, this means we have no user database to breach. There is no central repository of user credentials, email addresses, or profile data associated with ScanLens accounts — because ScanLens accounts do not exist.
The core app is built around on-device scanning and OCR rather than server-side document processing. Separately, our marketing website uses basic analytics to understand which pages people visit and how the site performs. We treat those as different systems and describe that split explicitly in our Privacy Policy.
ScanLens supports AES-256 encryption for sensitive PDFs, allowing you to password-protect documents before sharing or exporting them. The app also offers App Lock using Face ID, Touch ID, or a device passcode, so that even if someone has physical access to your unlocked iPhone, they cannot open ScanLens without biometric authentication or your code.
For a detailed explanation of how ScanLens protects your documents, see Document Security on iPhone. For the full privacy policy, see our Privacy Policy.
We believe in being transparent about how our business works, because it directly affects how we treat your data.
ScanLens is free to download. It handles document, ID, and passport scanning, crop / rotate / filters, and PDF, JPG, and PNG export — the everyday capture workflow.
Plans add the heavier document workflow: OCR in 50+ languages, interactive text extraction, e-signatures and annotation, merge and split PDFs, searchable PDFs, password-protected PDFs, watermark removal, Google Drive / Dropbox / OneDrive sync, smart folders, app lock, document-naming presets, and workflow automation.
There are no ads inside the app. We do not sell user data. Subscription trials and renewals are handled through Apple's standard in-app purchase system, and you can manage or cancel them from your iPhone's subscription settings. For full pricing details, see the pricing page.
This model is simple: we make money when users decide the paid features are worth paying for. That is the only revenue stream. It means our incentives are aligned with building a better product, not with collecting more data.
ScanLens is a young product, and we'd rather build a quiet reputation than manufacture loud-sounding press logos. We have not been featured in major outlets yet, and we won't put "As featured in" badges on this page until that's genuinely true.
If you cover iPhone productivity tools, paperless workflows, privacy-focused mobile apps, or on-device machine learning and would like a press kit, screenshots, a product walkthrough, or an honest interview about how a small Singapore team builds an iOS scanner without uploading documents to a server, we'd be happy to help. Send us a note via the contact form with "press" or "editorial" in the subject line, and include your publication name and deadline.
We can supply: high-resolution app screenshots, the app icon, founder/team commentary at the company level, technical detail on the on-device OCR pipeline, and a current changelog. We do not pay for placements, and we don't run sponsored review programs.
We are reachable and accountable. If you have questions, feedback, or a problem with the app, we want to hear about it.
We read every message and respond as quickly as possible.
For legal and policy documents:
Privacy-first document scanning for iPhone. Free to start, no app account required.