TurboScan and 2 Other Paid iPhone Apps That Just Went Free

Free-app tracking has a reliability problem: most "X is free right now" posts run on search-result snippets that are stale within days. Every price below is cross-checked against AppsHunter's live discount feed and re-verified against the App Store the same day this was written, and the most interesting pick here has a genuinely odd story behind its price tag.

#TurboScan: document scanner — free (was $14.99 for five days)

TurboScan is the headline pick, and not just because it's the best-reviewed app in this roundup by a wide margin: 4.9 stars across more than 101,000 ratings, which is an enormous sample for a Business-category utility. What makes it worth a post on its own is the price history — TurboScan has been free for most of its life on the App Store, going back to at least 2023. On September 18, it briefly switched to a $14.99 one-time purchase. Five days later, on September 23, it dropped back to free. Whether that was a pricing experiment or a mistake, the outcome for anyone downloading it today is the same: a document scanner with a five-figure review count, at no cost.

TurboScan turns your camera into a scanner with perspective correction and sharpening (the developer calls it "SureScan") so scanned pages actually look scanned, not photographed. The only in-app purchase is an optional developer tip — there's no feature gate behind it, which is rare enough for a utility this well-reviewed that it's worth calling out explicitly.

#Fantasy Dragon Simulator 2021 — free (was $9.99)

A lighter pick, and the kind of app that's worth exactly what you'd expect from the name: fly a dragon around a 3D open world, no combat system to master, no story to follow. It's rated 4.5 stars from 883 reviewers — a real, if modest, track record for a simulator in a genre that's mostly shovelware.

The app is free to download and play, but it sells optional coin packs (from $1.99 up to larger bundles) for cosmetic and progression boosts. None of it gates the core flying-around experience — the coins buy convenience, not access — but it's worth knowing going in if "free" matters to you beyond the download screen.

#Horse Riding Simulator 2020 — free (was $9.99)

Same studio pattern as the dragon app above, same monetization shape: free download, optional coin packs, no paywall on the core loop. Horse Riding Simulator has the largest review base of the two niche picks here — 4.3 stars across 3,118 ratings — riding, customizing, and exploring an open environment on horseback.

Neither simulator is going to compete with a premium game studio's production values, and the App Store listings are honest about that — these are built for a specific, casual audience that wants low-stakes, no-pressure exploration rather than objectives and difficulty curves. At free, that's a fair trade; at the $9.99 they normally charge, it's a harder sell unless you already know the genre is your thing.

#Honorable mention: Fisheye Camera Pro — $2.99 (was $3.99)

Not free, but discounted enough to flag: Fisheye Camera Pro applies real fisheye and lomo-style lens distortion to photos and video, rated 4.1 stars across 2,949 reviews. A dollar off isn't a dramatic deal, but for a camera effects app with a genuine, non-trivial review history, it's a reasonable one.

#This week's picks, side by side

#Why "free" isn't always the full story

Every app on this list is genuinely free to download and use in some meaningful form right now — none of them are a "free" listing that's actually locked behind a paywall five minutes in, which is a distinction worth checking before you trust any free-app roundup, this one included. But free-to-download and free-to-fully-use aren't the same claim: TurboScan is close to a true free app with an optional tip jar, while the two simulator games are free-with-optional-purchases, which is a different (and more common) shape. Neither is dishonest, but they're not interchangeable, and it's worth knowing which one you're installing.

#How we picked these four

All four prices come straight from AppsHunter's live discount feed, filtered to apps with min-rating-score=4 so listings padded with one-star, barely-downloaded junk don't make the cut — a common failure mode for automated "free app" posts that pull from unfiltered App Store data. Every price above was then re-checked against Apple's public lookup API the same day this post went live, and TurboScan's pricing history was pulled directly from its price-change log rather than a single snapshot, which is the only way to catch a five-day round trip like the one it just made. If a price reverts after this post publishes, that's normal App Store behavior, not an error on our part — check the live deals page linked below for the current state.

#FAQ

Will TurboScan go back to $14.99? There's no way to predict it — App Store pricing is set entirely by the developer and can change without notice. Given it flipped from free to paid and back within five days once already this month, treat the current free price as temporary rather than a permanent change.

Do I need an account to use TurboScan? No account is required for the core scanning functionality based on the App Store listing; it works as a standalone camera-based scanner.

Are the simulator games multiplayer? Both are built around single-player, open-world exploration rather than competitive or social multiplayer modes.

How often do apps like this actually go free? It varies enormously by app and publisher. Some, like the pattern seen in Ironhide's tower-defense catalog, cycle between a low sale price and full price roughly monthly; others, like TurboScan's years-long free run, stay put for long stretches before an isolated pricing change. Checking AppsHunter's live deals page is more reliable than assuming a pattern.

Browse the full, continuously updated list at appshunter.io/sales/apps, or check AppsHunter's Business app charts to see what else is trending alongside TurboScan this week.

Prices verified against the App Store on September 28, 2026 and subject to change without notice.