PDF On vs ScanFree
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
PDF On
Read full descriptionHide full description
PDF On turns paper into clean PDFs and lets you finish them right away: fill in, sign, highlight, share. Everything happens on your iPhone. No account, no upload, no tracking. SCAN AND CREATE • Scan documents with automatic edge detection • Take a photo and crop it: the edges are found and straightened for you • Build PDFs from photos, files and other PDFs • Convert Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, text and HTML files to PDF • Choose page size, layout (1, 2 or 4 per page) and quality • Optional date and time stamps • Make PDFs searchable with on-device text recognition • Protect PDFs with a password FILL IN AND SIGN • Tap a form field and type: the text lands inside the box, on the line • Return jumps to the next field • Checkmarks snap into checkboxes, dates follow the format of the form • Your name, address and phone number appear as suggestions above the keyboard • Sign by drawing, or photograph your signature on paper • Place a passport photo on an application form: the photo frame is found automatically • Typefaces, sizes, bold and colors for every language MARK UP • Highlighter, pen with thickness and opacity, lines, arrows, rectangles and circles • Undo and redo READING MODE • Full screen with trimmed margins, so the text is larger • Highlight with one swipe, in four colors of your choice • Name your colors, for example "Important" or "Question", and add notes • A list of all highlights with page jump; share them as text • The app remembers where you stopped reading ID CARD AND PASSPORT COPY • Front and back on one sheet in true original size • Optional enlargement, grayscale, cut lines and a watermark such as "Copy for landlord" PAGES • Reorder, rotate, crop, straighten and delete pages • Merge PDFs, insert scans, photos or other PDFs • Export the text as a Word document (.docx), copy text, search in the document PRIVATE BY DESIGN • Works fully offline • No account, no ads, no tracking, no data collection • Optional app lock with Face ID • Share extension: send photos and PDFs from other apps to PDF On LANGUAGES English, Spanish, German, French, Arabic, Persian, Urdu and more than 40 other languages, with full right-to-left layout.
ScanFree
Read full descriptionHide full description
ScanFree is your fast, simple and free all-in-one tool to digitize paper documents, annotate them, add your handwritten signature and export them as PDF in seconds. Invoices, contracts, receipts, certificates: ScanFree turns your iPhone or iPad into a pocket scanner, with no account and no subscription. HIGH-QUALITY SCANNING Automatic edge detection, precision cropping, perspective correction and filters, powered by the document scanner built into iOS. SORT BY LABEL Add colored labels to your documents (Bills, Home, Health…) and view your library grouped by label: each section folds away in one tap, everything stays tidy. SEARCH BY ANY WORD (OCR) ScanFree reads the text on every page. Type any word that appears inside a document — an amount, a name, a reference — and find it instantly, even when the file name tells you nothing. Recognized text can be copied in one tap. Everything runs on your device, offline. SIGN, ANNOTATE & ENHANCE Draw your handwritten signature, add text or drawings directly onto your pages, apply a document filter and crop, with undo and redo at every step. ALL YOUR PDFS IN ONE PLACE Every PDF you create is kept in "My PDFs": open it in the app, rename it, share it again or save it to Files without rebuilding it. IMPORT YOUR PDFS A PDF received by email or stored in Files joins your library: it becomes searchable, annotatable and re-exportable like a scan. INTUITIVE DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT • Reorder pages with drag and drop. • Add new pages to an existing document at any time. • Rename, organize and select several documents at once. FAST EXPORT & SHARING • Multi-page PDF in three quality levels. • Save individual pages as images (JPG). • Share in one tap by email, messaging, or to Files and iCloud Drive. 100% PRIVATE & LOCAL All processing and storage happen on your device. No data is sent to any server, no sign-up is required. COMFORTABLE TO USE List or grid views, dark mode, twelve languages. ScanFree is free, supported by a discreet banner and a short video when creating a PDF. Privacy policy: https://chocky.dev/legal/scanfree-privacy.html
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: PDF On at none against ScanFree's shown. ScanFree's advantage is device support (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.5 vs 17.0). On price and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
| Parameter | PDF On | ScanFree |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 15.5 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 11 MB | 73 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Abbas Hoseiny | Cedric PROCQUEZ |
In-app purchases
PDF On
No in-app purchases
ScanFree
No in-app purchases









