# VDScan vs Aetherly

The clearest difference is price: Aetherly at Free against VDScan's $14.99. Aetherly also leads on update cadence (every 5 days vs fortnightly). VDScan's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 4). On ads, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.

Aetherly is free to download; VDScan costs $14.99 up front. Aetherly sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month. VDScan asks for nothing beyond the download.

VDScan ships an update fortnightly, Aetherly every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on October 21, 2026 and October 14, 2026 respectively.

## The numbers

| Metric | VDScan | Aetherly |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Price | $14.99 | **Free** |
| Rating | **[4.5 (579 ratings)](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/vdscan/id1446737725/reviews)** | — |
| Number of ratings | **579** | — |
| Positive reviews | 72.0% of reviews | — |
| In-app purchases | **No** | Yes |
| Ads | No | No |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly | **Every 5 days** |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Size | 1.2 GB | 28 MB |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 17.0 |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | [Opus Noma LLC](https://appshunter.io/developer/1501593543) | [DuyTec GmbH](https://appshunter.io/developer/1891960547) |

## What reviewers say

### VDScan

[App page](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/vdscan/id1446737725)

Capture text from documents, labels, and signs using your camera and have it read aloud with text-to-speech. This app offers fast, accurate, and private on-device OCR with support for numerous languages. Save, export, and enhance your scanned documents with intelligent features.

**Highlights:** On-device OCR and text recognition, Text-to-speech with 61 voices, ScanTone real-time text detection, Batch scanning mode, Export as plain text or PDF, Offline functionality

**Features:** Vision Pro support

**In-app purchases:** none

**What reviewers like**

- 🚀 Fast and accurate OCR
- 👍 Easy to use interface
- 💡 Integrates well with VoiceDream Reader
- 🚀 Impressive scanning speed
- 👍 Helpful audio cues for scanning

**What reviewers complain about**

- 🐛 Crashes and loses scanned data
- 🐛 Struggles with curved/angled pages
- 🐛 Inconsistent performance on different surfaces
- 🐛 Difficulty scanning multi-column documents

**Reported bugs**

- Crashes when scanning too many pages
- Loses scanned data after app restarts

**Requested features**

- Batch import of photos for OCR
- Option to edit/correct OCR results
- Support for scanning book pages and flattening
- Ability to save scans directly to cloud storage


### Aetherly

[App page](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/aetherly-p2p-file-transfer/id6779823679)

**Features:** macOS Compatibility, Vision Pro support

**In-app purchases (4)**

| Purchase | Price | Billing |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Aetherly Basic (Monthly) | $3.99 | per month |
| Aetherly Pro (Monthly) | $11.99 | per month |
| Aetherly Basic (Yearly) | $34.99 | per year |
| Aetherly Pro (Yearly) | $99.99 | per year |


## Frequently asked questions

### Is VDScan free?

VDScan costs $14.99, with no in-app purchases.

### Is Aetherly free?

Aetherly is free to download, with in-app purchases available.

### Do VDScan or Aetherly have ads?

Neither VDScan nor Aetherly shows ads.

### Which is updated more often, VDScan or Aetherly?

VDScan ships an update fortnightly, and Aetherly every 5 days. Most recently, VDScan was updated on October 21, 2026 and Aetherly on October 14, 2026.

---

*Compared by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/) from daily US App Store data. Review summaries are generated from verbatim App Store reviews.*