This Week's Best iPhone App Deals: Free Document Scanning, Music Plugins, and Indie Games
This roundup gets a refresh: one deal from the original batch — Caves of Lore — has reverted to full price, so we swapped it for an award-winning premium game that's still discounted. The rest of the lineup has held up since we first published this: a genuinely well-reviewed document scanner that's stayed free, a niche synthesizer plugin real musicians actually want, and two indie games with the track record to back up their scores. Here's what's still worth grabbing, price-checked against the App Store as of September 21, 2026.
Clear Scan: Doc Scanner App — was $19.99, now free
Clear Scan turns your phone camera into a document scanner: photo-to-PDF conversion, receipt digitizing, and note scanning, aimed at replacing a physical scanner for anyone who still deals with paper. It's not a new or unproven app — 17,674 ratings at a 4.8 average is a real track record, not a launch-week spike, which makes the drop from $19.99 to Free the most substantial deal in this batch by dollar value.
Transform your phone into a powerful, free document scanner. Easily capture and digitize documents, receipts, photos, and more with advanced image enhancement and OCR capabilities. Save, print, or share your scanned files effortlessly.
Business-utility apps like this one rarely go fully free once they've built a review base this large, which usually means either a monetization strategy shift (watch for an upsell or subscription tier appearing in a future update) or a permanent repricing to compete with the free scanner apps already crowding this category. Six weeks after we first covered it, it's still free — that's a good sign this is a repricing, not a promo. At Free with a 4.8-star, 17k-review track record, there's little downside to grabbing it now.
FRMS – Granular Synthesizer — was $10.90, now $8.99
If you produce music on iOS, FRMS is worth knowing about even outside this deal: it's a hybrid synthesizer combining granular, FM, subtractive, and additive synthesis across up to four layers, with MPE compatibility for expressive MIDI controllers. That's a specific, technical feature set aimed squarely at musicians already working in AUv3-compatible hosts, not a casual sound-effects toy.
This app offers a powerful and flexible layering system for creating unique audio experiences. It blends multiple synthesis types, allowing users to craft everything from ambient soundscapes to glitchy textures. Import your own sounds or use the curated library for endless sonic exploration.
At $8.99 (down from $10.90, an 18% cut), it's a modest discount in percentage terms but a legitimate one on a well-reviewed app — 282 ratings at 4.8 stars is a solid signal in the specialist plugin space, where review volume is naturally lower than mass-market apps. Confirm your DAW or AUv3 host supports it before buying; developer Imaginando's other plugins are generally well-maintained if this is your first purchase from them.
Super Hydorah — was $4.99, now $0.99
Super Hydorah is a console-quality side-scrolling shooter with touch controls, built by Locomalito — a name with some pedigree in the retro-shooter space — and published through Abylight. At $0.99 (80% off $4.99), it's still the cheapest entry point on this list for a genuinely complete premium game rather than a free-to-play title with IAPs layered on top.
Experience a console-quality shooting game adapted for mobile with intuitive touch controls. Explore a non-linear galaxy, battle alien threats with diverse weapons, and uncover secrets. Offers multiple difficulty levels and integrated leaderboards for a challenging and engaging adventure.
666 ratings at a 4.8 average is a smaller sample than the mass-market apps in this roundup, but consistent with a premium, no-ads, no-IAP game that doesn't push notifications to inflate its review count — the rating reflects people who actually paid and played through it.
Severed — was $6.99, now $0.99
Severed puts you in control of Sasha, a one-armed warrior slicing through a nightmare world with touch-based sword combat, hunting for her missing family. It's not a new release — DrinkBox Studios (the team behind Guacamelee) shipped it back in 2016 — but it's held up: an Apple Design Award and an Apple iPad Game of the Year title aren't retroactively handed to mediocre games.
Embark on a surreal journey as a one-armed warrior wielding a sentient sword. Master touch-based combat, explore a nightmarish world, and sever enemies to gain powers. This critically acclaimed title features a unique art style and an award-winning soundtrack.
At $0.99 (86% off $6.99), Severed is the deepest percentage discount in this batch, and the 4.8-star average across 1,338 ratings is a real number, not a launch-week spike from an app with a handful of reviews. One honest caveat: AppsHunter's price history shows $0.99 isn't a first-ever low for Severed — it hit this exact price back in June too — so treat this as a recurring promotional price rather than a one-time drop. Buy it because it's a genuinely great game at a fair price, not because you're catching a once-ever deal.
UltiBudget – Offline & Private — was $12.99, now free
UltiBudget pairs receipt scanning with expense tracking and budget-setting, built around an offline-first, privacy-focused pitch rather than syncing your spending data to a cloud service. Smart expense splitting and rollover tracking round out the feature set for anyone managing a household or shared-expense budget.
This app helps you manage your finances by scanning receipts, tracking expenses, and visualizing your spending habits. It offers smart budgeting tools and private data storage, keeping your financial information secure on your device.
The review count here is small — 4 ratings at a perfect 5.0 — which is too little to draw a strong conclusion from either direction. Worth trying at Free given the low stakes, but go in with tempered expectations relative to Clear Scan's much deeper track record above.
This week's deals, side by side
| App | Category | Was | Now | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clear Scan: Doc Scanner App | Business | Free | 4.8 (17,674) | |
| FRMS – Granular Synthesizer | Music | $8.99 | 4.8 (282) | |
| Super Hydorah | Games | $0.99 | 4.8 (666) | |
| Severed | Games | $0.99 | 4.8 (1,338) | |
| UltiBudget – Offline & Private | Finance | Free | 5.0 (4) |
- Grab Clear Scan and UltiBudget first — they're free, so there's no cost to trying either
- If you produce music on iOS, confirm FRMS works with your host app before buying
- Super Hydorah and Severed are both premium, no-IAP games — no subscriptions to worry about, just the one-time price
Why these five and not the rest
AppsHunter's discount feed surfaces dozens of price drops on any given day, and most don't make it into a roundup like this one — a low review count paired with a suspiciously large "was" price is usually a sign the original price was barely tested, not a real deal (we cover that pattern in more depth in this week's App Store pricing report). The five here cleared a higher bar: each has either a review history deep enough to trust the rating, or a rating high enough to offset a smaller sample, and none of them monetize through the aggressive weekly-subscription pattern that's become common on the App Store's free side. Two of the five — Clear Scan and UltiBudget — are free this week, which means there's genuinely no downside to trying them regardless of how the rest of this list lands for you.
FAQ
How long will these prices last? App Store discounts are set by individual developers and can end at any time without notice — some run for days, others for weeks. If a price matters to you, grab it now rather than waiting.
Are any of these actually free forever, or will the price come back? There's no way to guarantee that from the outside. Clear Scan's deep review history (17,674 ratings) makes a permanent reprice more plausible than a short promotional window; UltiBudget's tiny review count doesn't give enough signal either way.
Is FRMS worth it if I'm not already producing music on iOS? No — it's a specialist tool for an audience already using AUv3-compatible music apps. If that's not you, skip it regardless of the discount.
Check AppsHunter's live deals page for the full, continuously updated list, or see our recent App Store pricing report for how this week's discounts compare to the broader pattern across the store.
Prices verified against the App Store on September 21, 2026 and subject to change without notice. Updated from the original August 10, 2026 version after Caves of Lore reverted to full price.