Seeing AI vs ScribeMe
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Seeing AI
This free app uses AI to narrate the visual world for individuals who are blind or have low vision. It describes people, text, and objects, assisting with daily tasks like reading documents, identifying products, and recognizing faces.
- Read text and documents
- Describe photos and objects
- Scan product barcodes
- Recognize people and currency
- Identify personal objects
- Augmented reality environment exploration
- Identify colors and light levels
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Seeing AI is a free app that narrates the world around you. Designed with and for the blind and low vision community, this ongoing research project harnesses the power of AI to open up the visual world by describing nearby people, text and objects. Seeing AI provides tools to assist with a variety of daily tasks: • Read - Hear text as soon as it appears in front of the camera. Document alignment provides audio cues to capture a printed page and recognize the text along with its original formatting. Ask Seeing AI about the contents to easily find the information you need. • Describe - Take photos to hear a rich description. Ask questions to focus on the information you care about. Explore photos by moving your finger over the screen to hear the location of different objects. • Products - Scan barcodes and Accessible QR codes using audio beeps to guide you; hear the product name and package information when available. • People - Save photos of friends and coworkers so you can recognize them later. Get an estimate of their age, gender, and expression. • Currency - Recognize currency notes. • Find My Things - Teach Seeing AI to recognize your personal objects and follow the audio cues to find them later. • World - An Audio Augmented Reality experience to explore an unfamiliar environment, including hearing objects announced around you with Spatial Audio (requires a device with a LiDAR, and iOS 14+). • Colors - Identify colors. • Light - Hear an audible tone corresponding to the brightness of your surroundings. • Photos and Videos in other apps - Just tap “Share” and “Recognize with Seeing AI” to describe media from Mail, Photos, WhatsApp, and more. • Browse Photos - Hear descriptions of photos and videos saved on your device. Seeing AI continues to evolve as we hear from the community, and AI research advances. Visit http://SeeingAI.com for more details. Questions, feedback or feature requests? Email us at SeeingAI@Microsoft.com.
ScribeMe
This AI-powered assistant helps visually impaired users navigate their surroundings and understand documents. It offers real-time object identification, text reading, and detailed image descriptions. The app makes documents accessible by preserving formatting and generating alt text, with advanced OCR in over 50 languages.
- Real-time AI video assistant
- Object identification
- Text reading
- Document scanning and accessibility
- AI-powered document summarization
- Image description and analysis
- OCR in 50+ languages
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ScribeMe is your all-in-one AI powered accessibility assistant for blind and visually impaired users, designed to make documents, images, and the world around you fully accessible. Whether you're exploring your surroundings, reading documents, or understanding photos, ScribeMe gives you the information you need with speed, accuracy, and independence. Live Assist is the world's first live AI assistant for blind and visually impaired users. It provides continuous updates about your surroundings as the scene changes, giving you the all information you need. Whether you're finding a seat in a busy café, locating a door, reading a menu, shopping independently, identifying products, or searching for misplaced items, Live Assist keeps you informed in real time. Live Assist now works with AI glasses from Meta, allowing you to use it completely hands-free through voice and camera-enabled interactions. Instead of holding your phone, you can receive continuous, real-time descriptions directly from your glasses, making everyday tasks more natural, seamless, and independent. Live Assist isn't limited to the camera around you. You can also share your phone's screen and receive real-time assistance while browsing inaccessible websites, scrolling through photos, using apps, reading social media, shopping online, or navigating content that isn't fully accessible—bringing the same intelligent assistance to both the physical and digital world. Smart Scan makes documents fully accessible in seconds. Instantly scan PowerPoint presentations and PDFs, and ScribeMe automatically preserves formatting by identifying headings, lists, and tables while generating detailed alt text for images. With advanced OCR in over 50 languages, it extracts text with high accuracy and lets you ask AI questions about your documents, from quick summaries to detailed insights. With Snap nScribe, you can capture photos using your camera or choose images from your gallery to receive rich AI-generated descriptions of product labels, surroundings, handwritten notes, and more. Upload multiple images at once for fast, detailed results, ask follow-up questions about any photo, or share documents and images directly from other apps to ScribeMe for instant AI-powered assistance. Terms of Service: https://scribeme-ai.com/terms Privacy Policy: https://scribeme-ai.com/privacy-policy
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Seeing AI at none against ScribeMe's 4. Seeing AI also leads on rating (4.3 vs 4.0) and ratings volume (626 vs 13). ScribeMe's advantage is update cadence (every 3 weeks vs every 2 months). On price, review sentiment, ads and 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
Both are free to download. ScribeMe sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Seeing AI asks for nothing beyond the download.
Seeing AI holds the better App Store score, 4.3 against 4.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Seeing AI has 626 ratings behind it against 13, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 69% of Seeing AI's written reviews are positive against 75% of ScribeMe's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Seeing AI ships an update every 2 months, ScribeMe every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 16, 2026 and October 14, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Seeing AI | ScribeMe |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.3 (626 ratings) — better | 4.0 (13 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 68.6% of reviews | 75.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 626 — better | 13 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 3 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 15.5 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 309 MB | 148 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Microsoft Corporation | Mark Morad |
Customer experience
Seeing AI
ScribeMe
Bugs and requests
Seeing AI
Reported bugs
3 issues- Barcode scanning not working consistently
- Document reader sometimes fails to load or process documents
- Frequent crashes or app becoming unresponsive
Requested features
6 requests- Add support for more languages, including Arabic and Chinese
- Improve accuracy of color and facial recognition
- Allow users to read digital displays like clocks and appliances
- Integrate with screen readers like VoiceOver for better accessibility
- Add an offline mode for using the app without an internet connection
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- Provide more customization options for voice settings
ScribeMe
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Seeing AI
No in-app purchases
ScribeMe
- ScribeMe Plus$4.991 Month
- ScribeMe Premium$11.991 Month
- ScribeMe Max$19.991 Month
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- ScribeMe Max Yearly$200.001 Year







