Scan documents to PDF — free, in your browser

Open this tool on your phone, tap Start Camera, allow camera access, frame the document and tap Capture for each page. Pages are stacked into a multi-page PDF that you can reorder by dragging. When you are done, tap Build PDF and the file downloads to your phone. No scanner app to install.

Yes — getUserMedia (the camera API) is supported on iOS Safari 14+ and Android Chrome / Firefox. The tool requests the rear (environment) camera by default at the highest resolution your device supports, which is typically 1920×1080 or higher on modern phones.

Yes. The "From gallery" button lets you pick existing images from your camera roll or files app. You can mix camera captures and gallery picks in the same PDF — useful when you want to add a scanned ID to a photographed contract.

Choose A4 for international correspondence and Letter for US documents — both produce print-ready PDFs at the standard paper size with the photo centered. "Fit to image" sizes each PDF page to its source photo, producing a smaller file with no white margins (good for purely digital sharing).

No — Scan to PDF produces an image-only PDF (the photo embedded inside a PDF wrapper). To make the text searchable and selectable, run the output through our PDF to Text tool (extracts text) or Image to Searchable PDF (adds a hidden text layer).

Camera capture, page editing and ordinary PDF generation stay in your browser. If you request a download while signed out, a temporary copy of the finished PDF is stored only to preserve it through sign-in and expires automatically. Searchable OCR sends page images to our secure server for processing. If your policy forbids any upload, use an offline scanning app instead.

Use bright, even lighting — daylight near a window is best. Hold the phone parallel to the page (not at an angle) to avoid keystone distortion. Capture at full quality (slider at 90%+) and pick "Fit to image" if you plan to print, so the page is not downscaled to A4.

Yes. No subscription and no per-page fee — scanning and multi-page PDF export are free with a generous daily allowance, and unlike many scanner apps we never watermark your output.

Yes. Each capture or uploaded photo shows as a thumbnail — drag them into the right order, and tap the trash icon to drop a blurry or duplicate shot. Only the pages you keep, in the order you set, go into the final PDF when you tap Build PDF.

Yes. The Start Camera button works with any webcam, so you can scan from a laptop or desktop as well as a phone. If no camera is handy, use 'From gallery' to add photos you've already taken — you can mix camera shots and uploads in the same PDF.

The Quality slider sets the JPEG compression level (40%-100%) applied to each page as it is embedded into the PDF, and it is the main lever on file size — higher values keep more detail, important for small print or fine signatures, while lower values shrink the PDF for easier emailing at the cost of some sharpness. Black & White mode trims a little more off a text page on top of that, though the Quality slider makes far more difference than the mode does.

Auto is the default and suits most documents: it whitens the paper, removes the shadow across the page and keeps color, so stamps, colored ink and highlighter survive. Black & White gives the classic photocopier look — crisp black text on pure white — using an adaptive threshold, and produces the smallest files; it is the right choice for text-only pages you are filing or emailing. Grayscale keeps shading (useful for pages with photographs or pencil work) without color. Original applies no correction at all, for when you want the raw capture.

Black & White runs an adaptive threshold, which reduces every pixel to either pure black or pure white. Once that has happened there is no tonal range left for brightness, contrast or sharpening to act on — they would do literally nothing. Switch to Grayscale or Auto if you want to fine-tune the tone, or use the Shadow removal slider, which works on all three correcting modes.

A photo of a page is the page's own brightness multiplied by the light falling on it, so a hand or phone casting a shadow makes one side of the paper darker than the other. The slider controls how much of an estimate of that lighting is divided back out, which recovers an evenly-lit page. At 0% you see the raw capture; at 70% (the default) a page shot under a desk lamp comes out uniformly white. Turn it down if a genuine dark area of the document — a photograph, a solid block of ink — is being washed out.

Auto-crop looks for a bright page against a darker background, so it struggles with white paper on a white desk — in that case it deliberately leaves the frame uncropped rather than guessing and cropping your document in half. Shoot against a contrasting surface if you can. You can also switch Auto-crop off entirely and keep the full frame, or rotate individual pages with the button on each thumbnail.

For anything you'll print or submit as an official document, choose A4, Letter or Legal (matching your region) with the Quality slider set to 90% or higher, so text and signatures stay crisp at full page size. Leave Orientation on Auto and the page will turn to match each scan. If the PDF is only for quick digital sharing, drop the quality to around 60-70% and pick 'Fit' to keep the file small with no white margins.

Yes. Type any name into the Output filename field before tapping Build PDF & Download — the file that lands on your device is named for its contents, like 'lease-agreement.pdf' or 'receipts-march.pdf', instead of a generic scan file you have to rename afterwards. The .pdf extension is added for you if you leave it off.

Yes. Lay each print flat in even light, capture it with your phone camera through this page, or add existing shots from your photo gallery. Switch the scan mode to Original or Grayscale so the photo's tones are preserved rather than corrected like a text page, drag the pages into the order you want, and build one multi-page PDF — a quick way to digitize old prints into a single album file, with no scanner hardware needed.

Yes — this one. CamScanner, Adobe Scan and the retired Microsoft Lens are phone apps, while this scanner runs directly in a desktop browser. Use a laptop webcam or drag in photos, then auto-crop, correct perspective and preview the scan without installing anything. Create a free account only when you download.

Upload the photo and pick the Black & White mode. The scanner first normalizes the lighting across the page — which is what removes the shadow and the grey cast a phone photo always has — and then applies an adaptive threshold, so text comes out solid black on white paper instead of the muddy grey you get from just cranking contrast in a photo editor. Auto-crop trims the desk away and perspective correction squares up the page in the same pass.

No. There is no watermark on standard downloads after free signup, no ads and no page limit. CamScanner stamps 'Scanned by CamScanner' across exports on its free tier, which is the most common reason people go looking for an alternative — this tool simply doesn't do that. Every feature described on this page is free.

Microsoft retired the Lens app in early 2026 and now points users to the OneDrive app for scanning. If you used Lens because it was free, unlimited and watermark-free, this tool covers the same ground: auto-crop, perspective correction, scan modes, multi-page PDF and an optional OCR text layer, plus it works on desktop, which Lens never did. For the current status of Lens and OneDrive scanning, check Microsoft's own support pages.