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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.
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.
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.
ScanLens is currently our only public product. It is a native iPhone document scanner with the following capabilities:
The app requires iOS 18.0 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 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.
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.