InstaScan vs PDF Colophon
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
InstaScan
Transform your iPhone into a powerful scanner. Easily capture, sign, and export documents as PDFs or JPEGs. Features AI-powered text extraction, summarization, and smart title suggestions for scanned content.
- Scan documents quickly
- Add signatures
- Export as PDF/JPEG
- AI text extraction
- AI content summarization
- Automatic edge detection and cropping
- Multipage document creation
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Turn your iPhone into fast and easy to use scanner. It’s never been so easy to Scan, put Signature and Email multipage documents into PDF or JPEG. You can scan any document in seconds include business cards, receipts, notes, passports, whiteboards and even multiple page documents. InstaScan's built in AI engine extracts text from scanned pages for you to copy. Moreover, it will suggest smart titles and generate summarised content from the whole scanned page. Just take picture, crop, choose preferred scanner effect and you’re done. Here are the features that awaits you: - Put your signature on any document easily - Anti shake technology while taking picture to get more detailed image - Automatic image edge detection - Smart image cropping - Image perspective auto correction - Several image effects - Save documents inside app or export in Camera Roll - Create multipage documents and email into PDF or JPEG - Automatic upload of documents to iCloud - Email optimized image size for instant attachment delivery You can get Pro features through auto-renewing subscription and if you want to continue getting premium features, your subscription should be continued. 3 Monthly subscription costs $7.99 (or equivalent) and renews automatically every three month, unless you cancel it through your iTunes account 1 year subscription costs $17.99 (or equivalent), free trial - 3 days and renews automatically every year, unless you cancel it through your iTunes account Prices are in U.S. dollars, may vary in countries other than the U.S. and are subject to change with notice. Payment will be charged to your iTunes Account at confirmation of purchase. Your subscription automatically renews unless auto-renewal is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current subscription. Your account will be charged for a renewed subscription within 24 hours prior to the end of current subscription. You can manage your subscription and switch off the auto-renewal by accessing your account settings after purchase. You cannot cancel the current subscription during the active subscription period. Any unused part or time-span of a free trial period will be forfeited, as soon as you purchase a subscription. more information can be found on the following links: Terms & Conditions: https://lmddata.blob.core.windows.net/lmdmore/InstaScanTerms.html?sig=W%2FIv5q3%2F5xqKaf7IdYuPyJPenpCy%2FuWal%2FBtUjKGLmY%3D&se=2024-04-24T07%3A59%3A54Z&sv=2019-02-02&sp=r&sr=b Privacy policy: http://lemondo.com/privacy We want to hear your suggestions, likes, complains.. Please leave your feedback, rate us on the AppStore or use the contact link to stay in touch. Download Scanner for iPhone right now and get all those features for free. We are working constantly to improve app performance and user experience. To get your feedbacks easily & make the process convenient, you can send us your questions & suggestions directly from the app "Settings”. Your suggestions are valuable for us! If you like Scanner for iPhone, don’t forget to rate us on AppStore! ;) Happy scanning!
PDF Colophon
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PDF Colophon is a document studio for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that can answer questions about your own documents. Read, edit, annotate, organize, redact, and sign — without exporting between apps, and without your files leaving your device. Ask your own library Ask what a contract commits you to, or what recurs across a hundred documents you haven't read in a year. Colophon retrieves the relevant passages and answers with citations to the exact pages, so you can check the source rather than trust the summary. Scope a question to one document, a collection, or everything you own. It runs on device through Apple Intelligence; conversations save as plain Markdown you can open in Files. Needs an Apple Intelligence device — everything else works without it. Read comfortably System, Day, Night, and Sepia themes dress the desk around the page, which stays light like paper. Read single pages, a continuous scroll, or fit to width. On iPhone, a reflow view rewrites the page as plain wrapped text, reading photographed pages with on-device text recognition first. Add, rename, and delete bookmarks; they save with the document. Edit the real page Tap any text block or image and change it in place. Colophon rewrites the document's actual text and image objects, so the page stays vector and searchable instead of being flattened into a picture. Change wording, swap an image, add a text box, or run Find & Replace across the document. What can't be applied cleanly is refused and reverted, never saved damaged. Redaction that actually removes Mark what's private and apply. The text and vector art underneath are deleted from the content stream and image pixels burned opaque, then a verification pass confirms nothing extractable is left. If removal can't be proven, the redaction is refused and rolled back — rather than covering your secrets with a black rectangle that lifts off in any other reader. Mark up anything Highlight, underline, strike through, draw freehand with pressure-responsive ink, and add comments, arrows, lines, boxes, ellipses, and callouts. Turn part of a page into a tappable page or web link, and change where it goes later. Export a summary of every mark as Markdown when you need to send notes instead of the file. Scan, recognize, organize Capture pages with the camera, with edge detection and perspective correction, or Continuity Camera on the Mac. On-device text recognition adds an invisible searchable layer to scans and tells you which pages it couldn't read. Merge, split, reorder, rotate, crop, and delete pages by dragging thumbnails; links and bookmarks to a deleted page go with it. Resize to a standard paper size, stamp Bates numbers, and compress images, leaving text and fields alone. Sign and protect Draw a signature, or sign cryptographically. Colophon embeds a real PKCS#7/PAdES digital signature — with an identity it generates or your own .p12 — and adds an RFC 3161 trusted timestamp. Existing signatures verify honestly, saying plainly when an issuer is self-signed or the document changed. Password-protect with AES-128 and control printing and copying. Fill AcroForm fields, flatten them, or export data as XFDF. Find anything Search titles and full contents at once, narrowed by collection, with results that open on the page. The index is built on your device and works across languages. One real app on three platforms The same native app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with full editing everywhere: a menu bar and shortcuts on the Mac, several windows at once on iPad and Mac, Shortcuts, Siri, and Spotlight throughout, and full-screen Present with no conversion. Private by construction No account, no analytics, no telemetry — everything happens on your device. The only outbound request is the optional signing timestamp, which carries a hash, never your document. Share through iCloud Drive only when you choose. No subscription. Buy it once.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: InstaScan at Free against PDF Colophon's $79.99. InstaScan also leads on iOS requirement (15.0 vs 26.0). PDF Colophon's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 3) and ads (none vs shown). On device support 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
InstaScan is free to download; PDF Colophon costs $79.99 up front. InstaScan sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $7.99 per 3 months. PDF Colophon asks for nothing beyond the download.
InstaScan ships an update every 2 months, PDF Colophon monthly. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and November 10, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | InstaScan | PDF Colophon |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $79.99 |
| Rating | 4.6 (1.9K ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 60.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 1.9K — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Monthly — better |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, Mac |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 90 MB | 25 MB |
| Age rating | +4 | 4+ |
| Developer | Lemondo Apps LLc | Erich Champion |
In-app purchases
InstaScan
- Pro Subscription 3 month$7.993 Months
- Pack VIP3 Days trial$17.991 Year
- Pro Version$39.99
PDF Colophon
No in-app purchases






