Scan to PDF — Free Document Scanner in Your Browser

Open this tool on your phone, tap Scan my document, allow camera access, frame the document and tap Capture page for each page. Pages are stacked into a multi-page PDF that you can reorder by dragging. When you are done, tap Build PDF & Download 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).

Only if you ask for it. A plain scan is an image-only PDF (the photo embedded inside a PDF wrapper). Switch on Searchable PDF (OCR) before you build and the tool adds a hidden text layer so you can search and copy the text; that option is Premium or 1 credit. Image to Searchable PDF does the same for photos you already have, but it takes images, not PDFs.

Camera capture, page editing and ordinary PDF generation stay in your browser. 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, 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 & Download.

Yes. The Scan my document 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 in a desktop browser. Use a webcam or drag in photos, auto-crop, correct perspective, then preview and download without creating an account.

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. Standard downloads are clean and need no account. CamScanner stamps 'Scanned by CamScanner' across exports on its free tier, which is a common reason people look for an alternative — this tool does not add that stamp.

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.

Almost always one of three things. The file is over the 20 MB free upload limit — Premium takes 50 MB and Pro 120 MB. The format is not one this tool accepts, so check the list shown on the upload panel. Or the file is not really the format its name says: renaming a file does not change what is inside it, and that is the reason a valid-looking PDF gets refused.

That is nearly always a font the document uses but the converter cannot see, so a substitute steps in and the spacing moves with it. Stick to widely available fonts, or embed the fonts in the source document before converting. Check page breaks and any table that sits near the bottom of a page in the output.

Scan to PDF supports free standard use within the published processing allowances. Free downloads are clean — no watermark. No signup is required for standard tool use. Photo effects and AI edits have a web-size limit on Free, with the original-resolution result available through Premium or one credit. Crop, resize, rotate, compress and convert stay full size. Published processing allowances and file limits still apply.

No — Scan to PDF runs in the browser on desktop and phone. There is nothing to install, no trial to start, and no license to buy before you can see whether it does what you need. Try it on the file you are actually stuck with rather than a sample.

This tool works with a camera or with image files, not with scanner hardware. If your flatbed or printer-scanner saves JPG or PNG images, add them with From gallery or Add files and build the PDF here. It does not accept PDFs that are already made.

The scanner builds the PDF but does not edit it. Open the scanned PDF in PDF Editor, run OCR on the page and click the recognized lines to change them. That is also how to scan a document and make it editable. OCR can misread, so check numbers and names before you download.

The scanner does not create Word files. For a photo or an image of a page, Image to Word with the text (OCR) option reads the words into editable paragraphs. PDF to Word can place scanned PDF pages in a document as pictures, which keeps the look but not editable text.

Scanning and translating are separate steps. PDF Translator only reads selectable text, so a plain scan is not enough: switch on Searchable PDF (OCR) in Scan to PDF first, then translate that PDF. For a single photo of a page, a sign or a menu, Image Translator reads the text and translates it.

You do not need an app. Open the page in your phone or computer browser, allow the camera and capture your pages; it works on an iPhone, an Android phone and a laptop webcam. A plain scan is assembled into the PDF in your browser, and the finished file downloads to the device you used.

Signed-out visitors can add a limited number of pages, and signing in raises that limit. Pages beyond the limit are not added, and the tool tells you so. A searchable PDF also has a per-document page limit that depends on your plan. For a longer document, scan it in parts and put the parts together with Merge PDF.

Yes. A plain scan is free and the PDF carries no watermark, so you can scan in PDF format free from any phone or laptop browser. The optional Searchable PDF (OCR) output is a document export: Premium or credits are required.

Yes. To scan paper to computer without a scanner, use a laptop webcam or a phone camera: place the page on a plain surface in even light, capture it and build the PDF. Pages you photographed earlier can be added with From gallery or Add files.

Allow camera access when the browser asks, or enable it in the site permissions. Close any other app that is using the camera, and open the page over a secure connection. If no camera is found or it still fails, add photos with From gallery instead.