CamScanner

Best Self Hosted Alternatives to CamScanner

A curated collection of the 3 best self hosted alternatives to CamScanner.

Mobile app and cloud service for capturing paper documents, enhancing images, performing OCR, converting to searchable PDFs/images, adding signatures, and organizing and sharing scanned files.

Alternatives List

#1
BentoPDF

BentoPDF

Self-hostable, privacy-first PDF toolkit that runs fully in the browser for editing, merging, converting, and processing PDFs without server-side uploads.

BentoPDF screenshot

BentoPDF is a self-hostable PDF toolkit that runs entirely in the browser, enabling PDF editing, organization, conversion, and processing without uploading files to a server. It is designed for privacy-sensitive workflows where documents must remain on the user’s device.

Key Features

  • 100% client-side PDF processing for strong privacy (no server-side file handling required)
  • Large collection of PDF tools, including merge, split, rotate, extract, and page organization
  • In-browser PDF editor with annotations, highlights, comments, shapes, images, and search
  • Redaction tools for permanently removing sensitive content
  • Form workflows including creating fillable forms and filling forms (including XFA support)
  • Utilities such as watermarking, headers/footers, page numbers, metadata viewing, and PDF comparison
  • Optional image-processing capabilities (e.g., deskewing) using OpenCV

Use Cases

  • Internal self-hosted PDF utilities for teams handling confidential documents
  • Browser-based PDF editing and redaction for compliance-oriented environments
  • Converting and preparing documents (splitting, merging, watermarking) without file uploads

Limitations and Considerations

  • Performance depends on the user’s browser and device resources, especially for very large PDFs
  • Some advanced PDF operations may vary in fidelity depending on source document complexity

BentoPDF provides a comprehensive set of PDF tools while keeping document processing local to the user’s device. It is well-suited for organizations and individuals who want modern PDF workflows without relying on third-party cloud processing.

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#2
File Wizard

File Wizard

Self-hosted web UI for file conversion, OCR for PDFs/images, and local Whisper-based audio transcription, wrapping common CLI tools with background jobs and history.

File Wizard is a browser-based utility for converting files, running OCR on PDFs/images, and transcribing audio. It provides a simple web UI that orchestrates common command-line tools and local ML models, with job tracking and a persistent history.

Key Features

  • Convert between many document, image, audio, and video formats by wrapping external tools (configurable via a YAML settings file)
  • OCR for PDFs and images using Tesseract and OCRmyPDF, including generating searchable PDFs
  • Audio transcription using local Whisper models (faster-whisper), with subtitle-style outputs supported by Whisper tooling
  • Drag-and-drop web interface with responsive dark UI
  • Background job processing with real-time status updates and stored job history
  • Optional OAuth/OIDC-based access control configuration (can run without auth in local-only mode)
  • Optional CUDA-enabled container image for GPU-accelerated transcription

Use Cases

  • Convert office documents and ebooks into consistent archival formats (PDF, EPUB, DOCX)
  • Turn scanned PDFs into searchable documents with OCR
  • Create transcripts/subtitles from meeting recordings and other audio files

Limitations and Considerations

  • Not safe to expose publicly without strong authentication and isolation; wrapping converters can introduce arbitrary command execution risk if misconfigured
  • Conversion fidelity and supported formats depend on the installed external tools and their build options
  • Transcription performance varies significantly by model size and whether GPU acceleration is available

File Wizard fits well for homelabs and internal teams that want a single, lightweight web interface to run conversions, OCR workflows, and local speech-to-text processing. Its tool-based architecture makes it extensible, but it should be deployed with careful security controls when used beyond local environments.

777stars
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#3
SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy)

SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy)

SANE provides a portable API, a collection of scanner backends and frontends, and network scanning support (saned/scanimage) for Unix-like systems.

SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) screenshot

SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) is an open-source API and project that provides a standardized interface to raster-image acquisition devices (flatbeds, handheld scanners, cameras, frame grabbers) and a collection of device backends and frontends. It includes a command-line frontend, the saned server for network access, and many hardware-specific backends.

Key Features

  • Standardized C API for scanner hardware that separates frontends (clients) from backends (device drivers).
  • Large collection of device backends covering many vendors and models, with per-backend status levels (complete, good, basic, minimal, untested, unsupported).
  • Command-line utilities and frontends (including scanimage) for scripting and GUI frontends for desktop integration.
  • saned daemon and a "net" meta-backend to enable networked scanning and remote access to locally attached scanners.
  • Build and packaging geared for Unix-like systems with traditional autotools/autogen, configure and make workflows.

Use Cases

  • Digitizing documents or photos using a variety of supported scanners from scripts or GUI frontends.
  • Providing a networked scanner service on a server so multiple clients can access a single physical scanner.
  • Integrating scanner support into Linux distributions, imaging workflows, or custom scanning applications via the SANE API.

Limitations and Considerations

  • Device support quality varies by backend; many legacy or vendor-specific features may be unimplemented or labeled "minimal" or "untested."
  • Some backends are unmaintained; users may need to rely on community patches or maintainers for newer devices.
  • Behavior and available options are backend-dependent, so application developers must handle inconsistent option sets across devices.
  • Networked scanning requires proper configuration (authentication, firewall rules) to avoid exposing scanner services unintentionally.

SANE is a mature, widely packaged project used across Unix-like systems to provide scanner access and a sharing service for scanners. It is primarily implemented in C and designed for integration into desktop and server imaging workflows.

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Why choose an open source alternative?

  • •Data ownership: Keep your data on your own servers
  • •No vendor lock-in: Freedom to switch or modify at any time
  • •Cost savings: Reduce or eliminate subscription fees
  • •Transparency: Audit the code and know exactly what's running