How to scan a document to PDF
To scan a document to PDF, use your device camera in the browser: each capture becomes a page and the pages are assembled into a PDF on your device, with no app and nothing uploaded. Every page is a photo, so run OCR after if you need searchable text.
To scan a document to PDF, open Scan to PDF and point your device camera at the page — no app, no account, and in your browser with nothing uploaded. Every capture becomes a page, you reorder or drop pages as you go, and the finished PDF is assembled and downloaded on your own device.
How to do it
Open Scan to PDF
Go to Scan to PDF and click Start camera. Your browser asks permission once, and the rear camera is the one requested — which is the one you want for paper.
Capture each page
Click Capture for every page. A numbered thumbnail appears below each time, with arrows to move a page earlier or later and an X to drop one you do not want.
Add photos you already have
Click Add photos to pull in pictures already on your device; they join the same document. If there is no camera, or you decline the permission, this is the whole tool — you can build the PDF from images alone.
Create the PDF
Choose Fit to photo, A4 or Letter, then click Create PDF. The document is built in the page and downloads as babapdf_scan.pdf.
Is there a free way to scan to PDF?
Yes. There is no account here, no install, no watermark on the output and no cap on how many pages you capture. The free scanners above this in the results are apps you install, and free at the point of use usually means the scan lands in somebody’s cloud folder. There is no cloud folder here to put it in.
Can I scan a document with my iPhone and make it a PDF?
Yes. Open the page in your phone browser, allow camera access, and capture each page — iPhone and Android work the same way. The preview is deliberately set to play inline, so iOS keeps the camera in the page instead of throwing it fullscreen and hiding the Capture button.
Does it crop and straighten the page like a scanner app?
No, and this is the honest trade. What the camera sees is what lands in the PDF: there is no automatic edge detection, no perspective correction, no de-skew and no contrast filter. The frame is drawn straight to a canvas and saved as a JPEG at quality 0.92. Fill the frame with the page, hold the camera square to it, and give it light.
Can I convert a scanned document to a PDF?
The pages you capture are already a PDF — that is what Create PDF builds. What they do not contain is text. Each page is a photograph, so nothing in it is selectable or searchable, for the reason set out in why you cannot select the text in a scanned PDF. Run OCR PDF on the result to add a text layer.
Can I scan a document to PDF and email it?
Yes. The PDF is created in your browser and saved straight to your downloads, so you attach an ordinary local file to your own email. It never passes through this site on the way out, unlike a printer or an app that emails the scan on your behalf.
Does my camera feed get uploaded?
No. The stream goes to a video element in the page, each capture is drawn to a canvas, and the pages are assembled into a PDF in the same browser tab. No frame is sent anywhere, because there is no server on the other end to send one to.
Fit to photo sizes each page to its picture at 96 pixels per inch, so a 1920-pixel-wide camera frame becomes a page about 20 inches across — fine on a screen, strange on paper. Choose A4 or Letter for anything you will print: the photo is scaled to fit inside a 24-point margin and centred, aspect ratio untouched, and a portrait or landscape choice appears once you leave Fit to photo. Every image also goes through the same canvas on the way in, so a PNG you add is re-encoded as a JPEG — the pages are JPEG either way. If your pictures are already on the device and you do not need the camera at all, JPG to PDF is the more direct route.
