How to Cancel a CamScanner Subscription, and What to Use Instead

People go looking for the cancel button inside CamScanner and never find one, because it is not there. A subscription bought inside a phone app is held by Apple or by Google Play, and that is where it has to be stopped. This page covers exactly where to go on each phone, why uninstalling the app changes nothing, what deleting your account does differently, and what to scan with afterwards.

Cancel a CamScanner subscription in your iPhone Apple settings

The first thing to get right is where the subscription actually lives. If you subscribed by tapping a button inside the CamScanner app on an iPhone, Apple took the payment and Apple holds the renewal, so Apple is where you stop it. Four steps:

1. Open Settings on the iPhone and tap your name at the very top of the list.
2. Tap Subscriptions.
3. Tap CamScanner in the list of active subscriptions.
4. Choose the option to cancel, and confirm it.

A few things about that screen are worth knowing before you go looking for it.

• A CamScanner subscription bought inside the iPhone app is billed by Apple, so only Apple can stop the charges. Your card is charged against your Apple Account, and CamScanner never holds the payment method at all.
• Nothing inside the CamScanner app can cancel an iPhone subscription, whatever its own settings screen offers you. A link in there can only hand you over to Apple's subscription list, which is the same list the steps above reach directly.
• A subscription that is missing from the Apple Subscriptions list has either been cancelled already or was never bought on that Apple Account. Apple shows what is currently active, so an empty list is an answer rather than a fault.
• Cancelling a CamScanner subscription through Apple normally leaves the paid features working until the end of the period you have already paid for. The cancellation stops the next renewal rather than cutting you off the moment you tap it.
• If an iPhone shows no CamScanner subscription but the charges keep arriving, check whether a different Apple Account bought it. Subscriptions follow the account, not the handset, which is how a shared or family device hides one.

Camera to Clipboard scans a page without uploading it anywhere

Once the subscription is stopped you still need something to scan with, so it is worth separating the two jobs people use a scanner for. Building an archive of documents is one job. Getting one scanned page onto your computer so you can paste it into an email or a form is a far smaller one, and it does not need a document manager at all.

• Camera to Clipboard has a document scan mode that finds the page edges and sends the finished scan to your computer. Line the page up, capture it, and the transfer is part of the same action rather than a separate send afterwards.
• A page scanned with Camera to Clipboard lands on the computer's clipboard, ready for Ctrl + V or Cmd + V. There is no file to locate, rename or attach before you can drop it into an email, a web form or a chat.
• Camera to Clipboard sends the scan straight from the phone to the computer over your local Wi-Fi, with nothing uploaded to a server. The page never reaches anyone's cloud, so there is nothing stored that a cancellation would later have to undo.
• Camera to Clipboard can capture several pages and combine them into one PDF, which arrives on the computer as a saved file. A single page comes across as an image on the clipboard instead, which is the quicker path when one page is all you need.
• Camera to Clipboard needs no sign-up and no password, so there is no account to delete later. The phone and the computer pair with each other by scanning a QR code once, which takes about ten seconds.

1. Install Camera to Clipboard on the phone and the matching app on the computer.
2. Pair once by scanning a QR code, about ten seconds.
3. Open document scan mode, line up the page and capture it.
4. Press Ctrl + V on a PC, or Cmd + V on a Mac.

Free to download and try on iPhone, Android and your computer. There is a longer walkthrough in the guide to scanning a document from your phone to your computer.

Cancel a CamScanner subscription in Google Play on Android

Android works the same way as the iPhone, with a different landlord. The subscription is a Google Play record, so the Play Store app is where it ends, not the CamScanner app. Four steps again:

1. Open the Google Play Store app on the Android phone.
2. Tap your profile picture in the top corner.
3. Go to Payments and subscriptions, then Subscriptions.
4. Tap CamScanner, choose to cancel, and confirm.

The same handful of traps catch people on Android as on the iPhone.

• A CamScanner subscription bought on an Android phone belongs to Google Play, so Google Play is the only place it can be cancelled. Google takes the payment and owns the renewal date, exactly as Apple does on an iPhone.
• A CamScanner subscription held by Google Play can also be cancelled from a computer, by signing in to Google Play in a browser. That matters when the phone has been lost, wiped or handed on, because the subscription outlives the handset.
• A CamScanner subscription bought on an iPhone will never appear in Google Play, even after you switch to Android. The store that took the money is the store that can stop it, and reinstalling the app on a new phone does not move the billing.
• Keep whatever confirmation Google Play or Apple shows when a CamScanner subscription is cancelled. A screenshot of the entry with its end date is the simplest evidence you have if a later charge needs disputing.
• A CamScanner subscription taken out on the company's own website is held by neither Apple nor Google. Nothing will show in either store's list, and you have to cancel it with the company directly, through the account you signed up with.

Deleting the CamScanner app does not cancel the subscription

This is the single most expensive misunderstanding on this page, and it is an easy one to make. Dragging an app to the bin feels final, and it is not:

• Deleting the CamScanner app from a phone does not cancel the subscription or stop the next charge. The subscription is a record held by Apple or Google, and it survives the app being removed, the phone being replaced and the account going unused for a year.
• Uninstalling CamScanner and then being charged again is how most people end up searching for how to cancel it. Nothing warns you at the moment you delete the app, so the next payment is the first sign that anything is still running.
• Cancel the CamScanner subscription first and delete the app second, in that order. Removing the app first blocks nothing, but it does take away the icon that would have reminded you the subscription exists.
• A CamScanner subscription bought on a phone you no longer own can still be cancelled from any device signed in to the same store account. Both Apple's subscription list and Google Play live in the account rather than on the handset.
• Signing out of CamScanner, clearing its data or turning off its notifications leaves the billing completely untouched. None of those reach the store's record, and only a cancellation inside the store does.

Cancelling a CamScanner subscription leaves your documents online

Cancelling and deleting your account sound like the same decision and are not. They have different consequences, and doing them in the wrong order can cost you either your documents or your money.

• Cancelling a CamScanner subscription stops the payments and leaves your account and every scan in it exactly where they are. You keep the login, and anything already uploaded stays on the service under the free tier.
• Deleting a CamScanner account is a separate action from cancelling the subscription, and it is the one that removes the stored scans. A cancellation on its own deletes nothing, which surprises people who cancelled for privacy reasons and assumed the documents went with it.
• Export or download every scan you want to keep before you delete a CamScanner account, because account deletion is generally not reversible. Once an account is gone, so is any document that only ever existed inside it.
• Deleting a CamScanner account while the subscription is still running does not automatically refund the rest of the period. Cancel first, let the paid time run down, and delete the account after it has expired.
• A refund for a CamScanner charge is asked for from Apple or Google rather than from CamScanner, because the store took the payment. Cancelling and refunding are two separate requests, and cancelling by itself never returns money that has already been taken.
• Check the CamScanner account itself for scans you have forgotten, not just the app on your current phone. Documents uploaded from an old handset are held against the account, so they are still there long after that phone has gone.

CamScanner keeps your scans in its cloud, so mind what you scan

Plenty of people cancelling a document scanner are not doing it to save the fee. It is worth being clear about what the actual concern is, because the structural version of it is easier to reason about than the arguments around it.

• CamScanner is a cloud scanner, so the pages you scan are uploaded to the company's servers instead of staying on the phone. That is how the syncing, the shared links and the web access all work. It is a design decision rather than a fault.
• The pages people put through a document scanner are passports, payslips, bank statements, contracts and medical letters. A photo app holding your holiday pictures and a scanner holding your identity documents are not the same kind of risk, even if the technology is similar.
• CamScanner's handling of user data has been publicly questioned more than once over the years, which is why plenty of people cancel it rather than over the price. The structural point below stands on its own and does not depend on any of that history, so it is the one worth deciding on.
• Any scanner that uploads your documents asks for more trust than one that keeps them on your own devices, whatever its record. The useful question is not whether a company has behaved badly before, it is how much you are required to trust it in the first place.
• Cancelling a CamScanner subscription removes nothing that has already been uploaded to its cloud. The billing stops, the stored documents stay exactly where they were, and only deleting the account changes that.
• A scanner that works only between your phone and your computer gives you nothing to trust a company with. No server holds the page, so there is nothing to be exposed in a breach and nothing left behind after you stop using it.

Your phone already has a free scanner that makes multi-page PDFs

Before you go shopping for a replacement, check what the phone in your hand already does. Both iPhone and Android have had a capable document scanner built in for years, and for most of what CamScanner is used for they are a straight swap.

• The iPhone Notes app scans a document into a cropped, multi-page PDF for free, with nothing extra installed. Start a note, tap the attachment button in the toolbar, choose Scan Documents, capture the pages and save.
• The iPhone Files app has the same document scanner and saves the PDF straight into a folder you pick. Open Files, tap the three-dot menu and choose Scan Documents. Use that one when you want a file rather than a note.
• The Google Drive app on Android scans a document into a PDF from its plus button. Tap +, choose Scan, capture the page, adjust the crop and save. Many Samsung and Pixel phones also carry a scan shortcut in the camera or notes app.
• A Google Drive scan lands in your Google cloud storage, which is a different company's server rather than no server. If you are leaving CamScanner because you would rather documents were not uploaded anywhere, this swaps one cloud for another.
• An iPhone can select and copy the text out of a scan on screen, which covers the everyday use of text recognition. Press and hold on the words in the image the way you would on a web page, then copy them.
• Google Drive can pull the text out of a scanned PDF by opening that PDF as a Google Doc. It is rough on a poor scan and it is free, which is the trade you are making.
• The built-in phone scanners give you a file, not a searchable library of everything you have ever scanned. Naming it, filing it and finding it again in a year is left to you, and that organising is the real thing a paid document manager sells.

Where each scanner stores your document decides how private it is

Five ways to scan a page, lined up on the four things that separate them: where the finished scan ends up, whether you have to hold an account, what it costs, and whether it builds a multi-page PDF.

Use your phone's own scanner for PDFs and a clipboard app to paste

Once the subscription is cancelled, what you replace it with depends entirely on which half of the job you were paying for. Find your situation below.

• The iPhone Notes or Files scanner and the Google Drive scan on Android are the best replacement for CamScanner when you want a multi-page PDF to keep. Both are free, both crop the page properly, and neither asks for another subscription.
• Camera to Clipboard is the best replacement for CamScanner when the scanned page has to be on your computer this minute. It captures the page and puts it on the clipboard, so it goes straight into the email, form or chat that is already open.
• Keep paying for a document scanner only if you genuinely use its library, its search and its sync across devices. Those three things are what the fee actually buys, and if you are only ever scanning one page and sending it, you are paying for a filing cabinet you never open.
• Delete your CamScanner account as well as the subscription if the reason you are leaving is that you do not want your documents on its servers. Cancelling stops the money and nothing else, so export what you want to keep and then delete.
• Scan a passport or a bank statement with something that keeps the page on your own devices, whichever scanner you use for everyday paperwork. A receipt and an identity document do not deserve the same handling, and you are allowed to use two different tools.

Common questions about cancelling a CamScanner subscription

How do I cancel my CamScanner subscription?
Cancel it in the store you bought it from, not inside CamScanner. On an iPhone, open Settings, tap your name at the top, choose Subscriptions, select CamScanner and cancel it there. On Android, open the Google Play Store app, tap your profile picture, go to Payments and subscriptions, then Subscriptions, and cancel CamScanner there. If you subscribed on CamScanner's own website instead, neither store holds that subscription and you have to cancel it with the company directly.

Does deleting the CamScanner app cancel the subscription?
No. Removing the app from your phone stops nothing, because the subscription is a record held by Apple or Google rather than by the app, and the billing carries on to the same schedule. Cancel it in the App Store or Google Play subscription settings first, then delete the app if you want to.

Does cancelling CamScanner delete the documents I scanned?
No. Cancelling stops the billing and leaves the account and everything stored in it alone. Deleting the account is a separate action, and that is the one that removes your scans from the service. Download or export anything you want to keep before deleting an account, because an account deletion is generally not reversible.

What can I use instead of CamScanner?
For a multi-page PDF, use the scanner already on your phone: Scan Documents in the iPhone Notes or Files app, or Scan in the Google Drive app on Android. Both are free and neither needs another subscription. If what you actually want is a scanned page on your computer, Camera to Clipboard captures the page and puts it straight on the computer's clipboard over your local Wi-Fi, with nothing uploaded to a server.