CamScanner alternative
A free CamScanner alternative with no watermark, no ads, and no account
Short answer: Scanly is a free, open-source document scanner for Android that covers what most people use CamScanner for (scanning paper to PDF, cropping, filters, multi-page documents) without ads, without a watermark on exported PDFs, without an account, and without uploading your documents.
CamScanner is one of the best-known scanner apps, but its free tier is built around a paid upgrade: exported PDFs on the free plan carry a "Scanned by CamScanner" watermark, the app shows ads, and many features sit behind a subscription. If all you need is a clean PDF of a receipt, form, or set of notes, that trade-off is hard to justify.
Scanly takes the opposite approach. Everything runs on your phone, the full scanning and export workflow is free, and the source code is public on GitHub so anyone can check how it handles your files.
Install Scanly free on Google Play (Android 10+, no account, no ads)
Scanly vs CamScanner at a glance
| Feature | Scanly | CamScanner (free plan) |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, every feature | Free tier plus paid Premium |
| Watermark on exported PDFs | Never | Yes on the free plan |
| Ads | None | Shown on the free plan |
| Account needed | No | Needed for cloud and sync features |
| Where scans live | On your phone | On your phone, with cloud sync to a CamScanner account |
| Works offline | Yes, fully | Scanning yes; cloud features need internet |
| Text recognition (OCR) | On-device, for search and copying text | Yes, with limits on the free plan |
| Sign PDFs | Free, offline | Available |
| Open source | Yes (AGPL-3.0) | No |
| Platforms | Android 10+ | Android, iOS, web |
CamScanner details reflect its public free plan as of October 2026 and can change; check its current terms. Scanly details are from the v1.0.18 release.
Why people look for a CamScanner alternative
- The watermark: free-plan PDFs are stamped, which looks unprofessional on invoices, applications, and homework.
- Ads and upsells between scans when you just want to finish the job.
- Privacy: in 2019 Kaspersky found a malicious advertising module in the Android version of CamScanner and Google temporarily removed it from Play. It was cleaned up, but many people would rather not route documents through ad SDKs at all.
- Subscriptions for features like removing the watermark, higher-quality exports, or larger cloud storage.
What Scanly does instead
- Live edge detection with auto-capture, or a manual shutter whenever you want.
- Crop and perspective correction, rotate, and 10 filter presets (Auto, Magic Color, Natural, Vivid, Screen, Grayscale, B&W, Whiteboard, Faded Text, Original). Your original photo is kept, so edits are always reversible.
- Multi-page documents, folders, and search, including search by words printed on your pages (text is read on-device).
- Export clean PDFs with optional password, page numbers, page size, margins, and orientation, or a ZIP of images.
- Offline PDF tools: merge, compress, password protect, watermark (your own), sign, and PDF to JPG.
- QR and barcode scanner and generator.
When CamScanner is still the better fit
Be honest about the trade-offs: Scanly is Android-only, and it has no cloud sync or web app. If you need the same documents on an iPhone, a browser, and a shared team workspace, a cloud scanner such as CamScanner or Adobe Scan may suit you better. If you want your documents to stay on your phone, Scanly is the simpler choice.
Switching from CamScanner
Export the documents you want to keep from CamScanner as PDFs, then open them in Scanly with "Open in Scanly" from your Files app. From there you can read them, sign them, merge them with new scans, or compress them. New scans go straight into Scanly's on-device library.
Questions people ask
- Is there a free CamScanner alternative without a watermark?
- Yes. Scanly is free and never adds a watermark to your PDFs. You only get a watermark if you add one yourself with the Watermark tool.
- Is Scanly safer than CamScanner?
- Scanly has no ad SDK, no analytics SDK in the app, and no account, and it keeps scans on your phone unless you share them. Its source code is public under AGPL-3.0, so its privacy behaviour can be checked by anyone.
- Does Scanly have OCR like CamScanner?
- Scanly reads the text on your pages on-device so you can search your scans by their contents and copy or share the text. Nothing is uploaded for text recognition.
- Is Scanly available on iPhone?
- No. Scanly is an Android app (Android 10 and later). Other apps with the name "Scanly" on the App Store are unrelated.
Sources
Last checked 2026-10-22. Markdown version