Genius Scan
On-device mobile scanner with OCR, PDF creation and optional cloud sync.
Opens the vendor's own site.
Jobs covered
Open a task to see exactly what the vendor documentation supports.
OCR
Browse all ocr toolsapplying text recognition to scans in the Genius Scan mobile app, where the help centre documents a Text Recognition setting that is switched on and then applied to new documents, a Manage Languages menu where at least one language must be active or the feature cannot process documents, and exporting the recognised text by copying it from the Text tab or by exporting the document as text, including several documents at once, with the help centre stating the feature requires an advanced plan and the pricing page listing OCR under Ultra rather than Basic
Merge
Browse all merge toolsmerging documents together in the Genius Scan mobile app as part of the scanning workflow, alongside adding and moving pages of a scanned PDF; not a general-purpose PDF merge tool
Protect
Browse all protect toolsencrypting the PDFs Genius Scan creates, listed as PDF encryption under PDF creation in the app features; not app lock, access permissions, certificates or DRM
Where your files are processed
Reported to stay on your device
Claimed by the vendor. Not yet independently verified.
Without an account, OCR, PDF generation and image processing all run on the device, in the vendor's own words. Creating an account is what changes that: document sync and backup, web access, exports and analytics have their own destinations rather than one.
The vendor's storage section permits storage in the European Union or in countries it considers adequate under European rules, which is wider than the EU alone, and the opt-in renaming feature sends first-page text to OpenAI. A European company is not on its own a promise that processing stays in Europe.
The vendor's pricing page states that scans are produced without watermarks. That is a vendor-reported answer rather than an output test, and we have not run one.
What it does
Genius Scan turns phone photos of paper into straightened, enhanced PDFs using document detection and perspective correction. Its privacy policy states that OCR, PDF generation and image processing all run on the device, and the free tier is unlimited for basic scanning and carries no ads, and the paid Ultra tier is what adds OCR, cloud backup and sync, web access, advanced organisation and extra export targets.
The company also licenses its scanning engine to other apps as an SDK.
Best for
Privacy-conscious mobile users and field teams who want a strong free scanner and prefer documents to stay on the device unless they deliberately opt into cloud sync.
Worth knowing
OCR, cloud backup and sync, web access and enhanced organisation need the paid Ultra subscription. Creating an account moves documents onto the vendor's servers, and the optional AI renaming feature sends first-page text to OpenAI.
Details, and where each comes from
Vendor statements, our own reading of their pages, and the things nobody has established yet, each answered separately. Where we have not confirmed something it says so rather than guessing, and a row nobody has established is greyed out.
- Versions covered
- Web · iOS · Android
- Website
- thegrizzlylabs.com
- Requires an account
- No
- Free tier
- Yes
- Watermark on the free tier
- No
- Maximum file size
- Not verified
- Batch processing
- Yes
- Data residency
- Multiple regions
- Open source
- Not verified
- Self-hostable
- Not verified
- Licence
- Not verified
- Redaction
- No redaction feature
- Programmatic access
- None
- Last availability check
- Responded in 239 ms 21 October 2026
Checked automatically by our own runner, not reported by the vendor. 100% of our last 30 checks got a response.
What the redaction verdict rests on
From the vendor's own documentation, read 22 September 2026. Not tested by us.
What that does not establish
The vendor’s own site was read on 22 September 2026 and contains no mention of redaction, sanitisation, blackout or whiteout. Absence from a vendor’s own material is not proof that a feature does not exist - it may be undocumented, or on a page the reading did not reach - but for a NEGATIVE claim it is the strongest evidence available, and it is weaker than a positive quote.
Recorded as such rather than presented as certainty.
What the vendor says
Claims are labelled rather than repeated as fact. Where we have checked something ourselves, it says so and shows when. Checked means we read the vendor's own page and it says what we recorded - not that we tested the behaviour, unless the note says we did.
-
“Genius Scan is free to use and fully functional.”
Checked by us - the source says this Read 22 September 2026
Confirmed verbatim: the pricing page's opening line is the claim, and it continues "Upgrade for more advanced features." So "fully functional" is the vendor's own two-part description - the free tier works rather than being crippled, and there is a paid tier above it. A second line on the same page describes Genius Scan as "a fully functional mobile document scanner", which is a different use of the same phrase.
This is the same shape as PDFix's claim, verified earlier in this campaign: free, complete, with a paid tier for scale rather than for function.
Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte
Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
- From
- the text a browser renders
- SHA-256
- b254f41e53544d781ba2c579dc48253c7519063e5565c3676a2b6747e085ff2d
How we checked
Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://thegrizzlylabs.com/genius-scan/pricing re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-21. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-thegrizzlylabs-com-genius-scan-pricing-8e619451.txt.
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“We store data only in the EU or countries deemed adequate by European regulators (e.g., under EU-US Data Privacy Framework).”
Checked by us - the source says this Read 22 September 2026
Confirmed verbatim: the sentence appears unaltered under a heading reading "Storage Location". The vendor is The Grizzly Labs, which publishes Genius Scan and operates the help subdomain named in the source.
The surrounding section supplies the fact the storage-location claim does not: immediately above it the policy states "Unless this privacy policy specifies otherwise, our data retention policy is to keep the data for one year", so data kept in the EU is also kept for a year by default, and the two facts belong together for anyone reading this record. As recorded, the claim says where and not how long, and it is a policy statement we have not tested.
Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte
Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
- From
- the text a browser renders
- SHA-256
- 836403c7160031582047c4deeed556229f21cdc2311803bd0bb1d531f7ebe0ce
How we checked
Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://help.geniusscan.com/security-and-privacy/privacy-policy re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-21. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-help-geniusscan-com-security-and-privacy-privacy-policy-9510413b.txt.
Each claim is quoted from the vendor's own pages. This section describes what we have and have not checked - it is not a judgement about anyone.
Sponsorship is distribution, not an endorsement or a promise of search rankings, AI citations, traffic, or sales. This listing is a free entry, compiled from published sources.