Comparison

ScanMate vs Private Scan

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ€” with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

ScanMate

Features
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ScanMate turns your iPhone into a fast, private document scanner โ€” without the ads, watermarks, and subscription traps you're tired of. FREE, AND STAYING FREE โ€ข Unlimited scans โ€” no daily limits โ€ข No watermark on any export โ€ข No ads, anywhere โ€ข Automatic edge detection, manual crop with a magnifier โ€ข Multi-page and batch scanning โ€ข Enhancement filters: Auto, Grayscale, B&W, Color โ€ข Sign pages, reuse saved signatures, drop in a date stamp โ€ข Expiry reminders for passports, IDs, insurance, and contracts โ€ข Export to PDF, JPG, or PNG; share or save to Files โ€ข Folders, tags, search, favorites, and Trash โ€ข Face ID app lock โ€ข Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, Control Center button, Siri and Shortcuts โ€ข Find any scan straight from Spotlight SCANMATE PRO โ€ข Offline OCR in more than 15 languages โ€ข Search inside your documents โ€ข AI naming and document classification โ€ข Receipt, invoice, and business-card extraction โ€” save cards to Contacts โ€ข Receipt ledger with monthly totals and CSV export โ€ข Smart cleanup and background removal โ€ข PDF tools: merge, split, reorder, compress โ€ข Export to Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive โ€ข Unlimited private folders PRIVATE BY DESIGN Everything runs on your iPhone. Scans and text recognition never touch our servers. Documents sync through your own iCloud account โ€” we never see them. Locked documents and private folders never appear in widgets or Spotlight. HONEST PRICING A genuinely useful free tier that stays free. One fair yearly plan, or buy Pro once with Lifetime. No fake countdowns, no surprise trial charges, no dark patterns. Cancel anytime in Settings. Built for students, small businesses, freelancers, accountants, lawyers, real estate agents, teachers, and parents. Scan a receipt, a contract, a whiteboard, or a stack of notes โ€” and get a clean, professional PDF in seconds. โ€” Questions? support@scanmate.app โ€” a real person answers. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://jigsawlab.com/scanmate/privacy.html

About

Private Scan

Features
Read full description

PrivateScan turns paper into clean, searchable PDFs entirely on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. No accounts, no cloud processing, no tracking, no subscription. THE PRIVATE ONE Most scanner apps send your documents to servers for processing. PrivateScan never does. Scanning, filters, text recognition, and even AI naming all run on your device using Apple frameworks and an optional on-device model. The app keeps your documents, their names, and their text on your device unless you send them. It does send anonymous usage and crash reports so we can fix crashes and improve it; they never include your documents, their names, their text or their images, and you can turn them off in Settings > Privacy. SCAN ANYTHING Point the camera at a page and PrivateScan finds the edges, straightens the result, and cleans it up. Scan books as open spreads and split them into facing pages, capture whiteboards without glare, compose ID cards and passports onto a single page (free, while others charge for this), and import photos or PDFs. Keep everything organized in folders with color labels. SIGN AND EDIT Draw a signature once and place it on any page. Reorder, split, and combine documents. Rescue bad lighting with enhance, black & white, grayscale, and whiteboard filters. FIND ANY DOCUMENT Search reads every scanned word, so a receipt, a contract, or a letter is one search away. Premium unlocks text recognition that runs on your device, even offline, and smart naming with a small on-device AI model (a one-time 1.8 GB download) that titles each scan for you, so receipts stop being called "Scan 47". Translate extracted text without it leaving your phone. EXPORT ANY WAY YOU WORK PDF, JPG, PNG, Word, Excel, TXT, and RTF, with file size presets, your own watermark, and password protected PDFs. Word and Excel exports build real .docx and .xlsx files entirely on your device, so even your editable documents never touch a server. Excel export finds the tables in a scan and turns them into rows and columns you can edit. Excel export requires iOS 26. LOCK IT DOWN Turn on the app lock and PrivateScan requires Face ID, Touch ID, or your passcode every time it opens. Files are protected with iOS data protection so they stay encrypted while your device is locked. A privacy shield hides your documents in the app switcher. YOUR DEVICES, YOUR CLOUD iCloud sync is off by default. Turn it on and your documents sync through your own private iCloud, protected by your Apple Account. We run no servers and could not read your documents if we wanted to. ONE PRICE, FOREVER Scanning is free. A single purchase unlocks premium: text extraction, AI smart naming, Word and Excel export, password protected PDFs, exports without watermarks, and no limits on pages or exports. No subscription. Buy it once, own it forever, share it with your family through Family Sharing. Your documents stay on your device. The privacy policy says exactly what the anonymous reports carry and how to turn them off: https://freedom-terminal.com/privatescan/privacy/

Screenshots

ScanMate4 screens
Private Scan4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Private Scan at every 2 days against ScanMate's every 2 weeks. Private Scan also leads on device support (3 vs 1). On price, ads, in-app purchases and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Both are free to download. ScanMate sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and Private Scan sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

ScanMate ships an update every 2 weeks, Private Scan every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 11, 2026 and October 5, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences ยท 4 level
ScanMate versus Private Scan: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterScanMatePrivate Scan
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeksEvery 2 days โ€” better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad, Mac โ€” better
Requires iOS18.017.0 โ€” better
Further details โ€” not scored
Size3 MB39 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperiCometVishut Dhar

In-app purchases

3 purchases

ScanMate

Subscriptions2
  • Monthly Scan Mate Membership$4.991 Month
  • Yearly Scan Mate Membership$29.991 Year
One-time1
  • Lifetime Membership Scan Mate$59.99
1 purchases

Private Scan

One-time1
  • PrivateScan Premium$9.99

Questions

Is ScanMate free?
ScanMate is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Private Scan free?
Private Scan is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do ScanMate or Private Scan have ads?
Neither ScanMate nor Private Scan shows ads.
Which is updated more often, ScanMate or Private Scan?
ScanMate ships an update every 2 weeks, and Private Scan every 2 days. Most recently, ScanMate was updated on October 11, 2026 and Private Scan on October 5, 2026.

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