The best document scanners help you digitize documents, receipts, images, and even 3D objects - and they're essential for anyone archiving important files (and freeing up physical storage space).
Simplifying storage, backup, and sharing of files, scanners for documents often offer extras like adjustable resolution and color settings, automatic document feeding, optical character recognition, and with document management integration, so you can make the most of the scanning process.
Our team of reviewers have tested the best scanners overall - but which is the best scanner for documents, receipts, and other files?
We've explored scanning speed, portability, sheet capacity, connectivity options, and value for money to identify the top-rated scanners for fast and accurate document reproduction. Whether you want a portable document scanner you can throw in your laptop bag, a business document scanner, or an overhead scanner for digitizing books and magazines, our round-up includes a range of top models for the home, office, and beyond.
The quick list
The Fujitsu fi-800R is a delightful cross between a desktop document scanner and a portable one. It scans about 40 pages (or 80 images) per minute and rightly deserves the top spot, thanks to unique features like Return Scan and U-Turn Scan that do away with the need of having multiple paper trays or slots.
The Brother ADS-2800W is the ultimate wireless document scanner, as it allows you to scan directly to cloud applications like Dropbox and Google Drive, and that too, without compromising on the speed of scanning – it boasts a very respectable 40 ppm speed at 200 DPI, which is what you get with most USB document scanners.
If you’re looking for an ultra-portable power-packed document scanner for on-the-go usage, it simply doesn’t get better than the Brother DS-940DW weighing just 1.5 pounds and measuring just 12.6 x 2.5 x 1.8 inches.
The Brother ADS-4900W is a heavy-duty document scanner with a massive daily duty cycle of 9,000 scans capable of outperforming most other high-volume scanners for medium and even some large-sized organizations and workgroups.
The Epson DS-30000 is an enterprise-level document scanner and should be the go-to choice for anyone who wants to scan A3-size pages, thanks to its capacity for large documents of up to 12 by 17 inches.
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The ET24 Pro overhead scanner by Czur is a game-changer for professors and educational institutions, as it allows you to easily scan books, magazine pages, and even objects for presentations in the classroom or online teaching.
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If you're in the market for a specialized receipt, expense report, or invoice scanner, the Epson RR-600W is going to fit your bill. It comes with a ScanSmart Accounting Edition application that will quickly familiarise itself with the information you throw at it on a regular basis and learn to identify and segregate recurring data, including monthly expenses and vendor names.
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What are the best document scanners in 2024?
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Best document scanner overall
The Fujitsu fi-800R is a delightful cross between a desktop document scanner and a portable one. It scans about 40 pages (or 80 images) per minute and rightly deserves the top spot, thanks to unique features like Return Scan and U-Turn Scan that do away with the need of having multiple paper trays or slots.
Simply put, these latest technologies allow the scanner to use a single slot for receiving and ejecting documents. This is why the doc scanner is ultra-portable despite being so powerful.
The Active Skew Correction technology is a notable feature, too. As the name suggests, it automatically aligns and straightens out the documents you throw into the scanner, allowing you to be hasty.
A slight downside is that you don't get multiple connectivity options – just a simple USB connection – whereas other doc scanners boast Wi-Fi connectivity and sometimes Ethernet networking as well.
While that does hamper its versatility, especially when it comes to scanning from mobile devices, it's still one of the very best for homes, small offices, and front desks, as it's faster than rivals like the Brother ADS-1700W and the Epson ES-300W while also rocking a compact size – it only asks for 12 by 4 inches of desk space.
Best wireless document scanner
The Brother ADS-2800W is the ultimate wireless document scanner, as it allows you to scan directly to cloud applications like Dropbox and Google Drive, and that too, without compromising on the speed of scanning – it boasts a very respectable 40 ppm speed at 200 DPI, which is what you get with most USB document scanners.
One of the standouts with this one is multiple user profiles. Basically, you and all your colleagues will be able to save your individual scanning preferences under different profiles, making it ideal for office settings. You can create up to 100 user profiles, and it's also possible to PIN-protect the scanner should the need arise.
Not just 11 x 17 inch documents, but it also works perfectly well for small receipts, cards, bills, and more such flimsy items.
In addition to wireless connectivity, you can just as easily use it with a computer, too, irrespective of whether that's a Windows, Linux, or Mac operating system. Nifty features include edge cleanup, hole-punch removal, and background removal, which, alongside its 50-sheet capacity, 3000-page daily duty cycle, and 3.7-inch color touchscreen, make it a value-packed workhorse.
Best portable document scanner
If you’re looking for an ultra-portable power-packed document scanner for on-the-go usage, it simply doesn’t get better than the Brother DS-940DW weighing just 1.5 pounds and measuring a measly 12.6 x 2.5 x 1.8 inches.
What stands out is its rechargeable lithium battery, meaning you don't have to plug it into a socket to use it. Also, its ability to scan to a microSD card blew us out of the water – you don't need a laptop for scanning, as the scanner is self-sufficient. You can then insert the microSD card into your laptop or PC later, and you're good to go.
It boasts a reasonable daily duty cycle of 100 scans and a speed of 16 pages per minute and 32 images per minute. However, a more realistic number would be 13-14 ppm and 28-30 ipm, as much will depend on the speed of the person handling the scanning process. Still, it's much faster than other compact scanners, including its DS-70 sibling and the Epson DS-80W.
It's worth noting that this is a scanner where you'll have to manually feed the documents, so it's not really meant for lengthy office reports; however, its sub-$200 price tag offsets that downside really nicely.
Best document scanner for offices
The Brother ADS-4900W is a heavy-duty document scanner with a massive daily duty cycle of 9,000 scans capable of outperforming most other high-volume scanners for medium and even some large-sized organizations and workgroups.
A scanning speed of 60 pages per minute and 120 images per minute at under $800 is simply outstanding value for money, which is further enhanced by its ability to operate without a laptop or computer – yep, it’s able to scan directly to a flash drive, similar to the Brother DS-940W above.
Even at 600 DPI, it can scan about 17 pages per minute; agreed, such a high resolution won't be your use case day in and day out, but it's still a nifty feature to have in your armory.
For all its compatible applications for PC users, the ADS-4900W does very little to court Mac users, who will be left wanting solid support from this otherwise all-purpose scanner.
Best document scanner for enterprise
The Epson DS-30000 is an enterprise-level document scanner and should be the go-to choice for anyone who wants to scan A3-size pages, thanks to its capacity for large documents of up to 12 by 17 inches.
With a daily duty cycle of a whopping 30,000 scans and scan speeds of 70 pages per minute (or 140 images per minute), it's undoubtedly an overkill for most users, but large paper-heavy businesses such as those in the legal and financial sectors will want to get one of these.
If the specs above don't cut it for you, consider spending an additional $1,000 for the Epson DS-32000, which offers 25 percent higher volume ratings and scanning speeds.
Given the sheer power under its hood, it's no wonder that this behemoth costs $2,499. However, it's easily comparable to some of the small- to mid-sized corporate scanners, and given how much space you'll be saving by getting the DS-30000 instead of a full-blown corporate scanner, it's well worth the splurge.
A notable downside could be its lack of wireless or Ethernet networking, and you'll have to make do with the USB 3.0 connectivity option.
Best overhead document scanner
The ET24 Pro overhead scanner by CZUR is a game-changer for professors and educational institutions, as it allows you to easily scan books, magazine pages, and even objects for presentations in the classroom or online teaching.
It comes with page-turn detection and automatic focus, so you'll really not have to do much other than place the book or magazine on the scan platform and turn over the pages. This, combined with CZUR’s latest technology that can flatten the 3D curved surface to completely flatten a book page, results in accurate and professional scanning.
The equipment is supported by a 24-megapixel HD camera; plus, its compatibility with pretty much every Windows OS, macOS, and Linux system is pretty commendable, too.
What’s more, the presentations are made possible with its Visual Presenter mode (and all that it requires is an HDMI connection), which plays the videos captured by the scanner directly to monitors.
Best scanner for receipts and invoices
If you're in the market for a specialized receipt, expense report, or invoice scanner, the Epson RR-600W is going to fit your bill. It comes with a ScanSmart Accounting Edition application that will quickly familiarise itself with the information you throw at it on a regular basis and learn to identify and segregate recurring data, including monthly expenses and vendor names.
Not just that, but it's also capable of saving the identified data in separate fields in its built-in database, and you can also set it up to export this data to accounting software like TurboTax and QuickBooks, or even simple CSV files, for that matter.
With that said, it's just as good for general scanning purposes, too, and you'll enjoy scan speeds of about 35 pages per minute and 70 images per minute. Combined with a large 100-sheet ADF and a daily duty cycle of 4,000 scans, it can easily handle the workloads of a decent-sized office.
Best document scanner: Frequently asked questions
Which is the best document scanner?
The Fujitsu fi-800R is a value-packed workhorse and certainly the best document scanner overall in our testing. It boasts a scanning speed of about 40 pages (and 80 images) per minute – more than enough for most users – and comes with unique features like U-Turn Scan and Return Scan that allow the scanner to operate with just a single slot.
Then there's the Active Skew Correction technology that automatically aligns any document you put on its tray. Despite the power under its hood, the Fujitsu fi-800R doesn't ask for a lot of space and does well to be the flag bearer of what modern document scanners should be like – compact yet powerful and feature-packed.
Do you need a special-purpose scanner?
If you're in the market for a document scanner for a specific purpose, which may include portability, overhead scanning, or receipt scanning, then you'll be better off with a special-purpose scanner than a general all-purpose one.
For instance, the Brother DSmobile DS-940DW weighs just 1.5 pounds and comes with wireless connectivity and decent scan speeds, making it an automatic choice for anyone who travels often and is looking for a portable scanner small enough to fit in their backpack.
Similarly, if your primary use case is scanning receipts and invoices, a scanner like the Epson RapidReceipt RR-600W, with specialized software to segregate recurring data (such as monthly expenses and vendor names), should be your go-to choice.
What's the best resolution for a scanner?
The best resolution to set for your scanner will depend on your use case. A tax document or receipt or any other fine print document, for example, can be scanned at even 200 dpi, and the image generated will be of decent quality. Dpi, or dots per inch, is a printing measurement used for traditional as well as digital images.
Now, you can keep increasing the resolution of your scanner depending on the clarity you expect. 300 dpi is the standard resolution for almost every scanner, as it's more than enough for general documents or photos used in emails or on the web. However, if you plan on printing large photos (poster size even) or zooming in on a part of a photo, then 600 dpi will give you excellent results.
It's also worth noting that higher-resolution images will be bigger in size and will, therefore, occupy more room on hard drives or cloud storage, as the case may be.
How to choose the best document scanner for you
Document scanners are the way to go if you want to protect your documents from physical damage by digitizing them and simplifying the sharing of in-depth reports and dense information over the internet. To make things really easy, some of the best printers we've tested included scanning and photocopier facilities, which might
But what should you look for in a scanner - whether it's built into a printer or a standalone unit?
When in the market for the best document scanner, it’s more about the right scanner for your needs and less about the best scanner that’s available. There are different types of document scanners on offer, so it's important to zero in on what your home office or enterprise needs.
For example, if you plan on scanning large volumes of paperwork day in and day out, you should go for a heavy-duty, robust scanner or any of the fastest scanners on the market. For images, the best photo scanners are designed to capture every pixel of your home media. And if you're a professor or a slide presenter, you'd probably want an overhead scanner for scanning books and magazines.
And if portability is towards the top of your priority list, you'd want a scanner that's extremely lightweight, which will often come at a compromise, including lower scanning speeds and reduced ability to handle high-volume tasks.
Another crucial aspect is whether you need two-sided scanning. If you're scanning memos, reports, invoices, or bills, chances are that you'd want a scanner that doesn't warrant manual flipping over of the aforementioned document types.
Similarly, features like sheet capacity and the speed of scanning carry varying importance based on the volume of your work.
It's also important to look at the space available for a scanner in your office. Scanners vary dramatically in size – also weight. While some scanners are as bulky as a computer itself, sheet-fed scanners (also known as automatic document scanners) are almost always available in compact sizes.
However, a flatbed scanner is more flexible and gives better quality copies, alongside being more expensive, so that's something you'll have to keep in mind, too.
Next up, consider the scanner’s resolution. If you require high-resolution printouts, you'd want to go for scanners with higher DPIs – graphic designers do. For most businesses, though, a dpi of 600 should be more than enough.
Also, keep in mind that the higher the dpi, the more the depth of the scanner, and therefore the costlier the scanner will be. Evaluating your budget is important to ensure you don't overdo it if you don't have to.
Pair your scanner with the best scanning software, best OCR software, and the best document scanning apps for capturing, editing, storing, and sharing digital files.
How we test the best scanners for documents
Our team of expert reviewers test hundreds of essential office hardware, from the best small business printers to the best business tablets - so we know exactly what to look out for when it comes to rating scanners for documents.
To start off, we check the compatibility of the scanner by connecting it with different operating systems and transferring the scanned documents to the system. We then explore the connectivity options of the scanner (for example, USB, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and more).
Next comes comparing the scanning quality. This is done by scanning documents of varying details and checking the quality at different resolutions. During this process of scanning different files, we also note the scanning speed and size compatibility of the device.
We then explore the bundled features of the scanner, if any. Some scanners provide features like document management and OCR capabilities, which may make a scanner more value for money for certain users.
Finally, we analyze customer reviews and ratings to take inputs from long-term users. This helps us get multiple perspectives in place so that we can give you a more realistic idea of the durability and reliability of a doc scanner.
Now, in order to ensure equitable comparison, value for money takes center stage in all of the product features we review. After all, document scanners aren't cheap, and given the amount and the length of your investment, we make sure that we only recommend value-packed scanners.
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