Gone are the days of collecting and storing bundles of business cards in your wallet (or, more realistically, inevitably misplacing them). Now, with a business card scanner app and the click of a button, you can scan business cards directly into your phone and store an unlimited number of contacts. But the best business card scanning apps don't stop with scanning and storage—they also come with plenty of other features that can help you be more efficient, organized, and connected.
To help you find the right business card scanner software, I tested several dozen apps—including the ones already included in your phone, CRM apps with card scanners, and those designed with both general and specific users in mind. A lot of the options are starting to share the same features, so I narrowed the list down to the five that do it best.
Here are my picks for the five best business card scanners. Click on any app to learn more about why I chose it, or keep reading for more context on business card readers.
The best business card scanner apps
BizConnect for accuracy
Contact Snapper for ease of use
Haystack for the best free business card scanner app
CamCard for the best all-in-one business card scanner
Covve for maintaining relationships
What makes the best business card scanner app?
How we evaluate and test apps
All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.
To find the best business card scanning app, I started by compiling a list of basically every option out there. I then downloaded each app, set up my accounts, and tested each one with two business cards: one with a simple design that I knew should be easy for any solid app to scan, and one with a busy layout that I thought might trip up even the best options.
From there, I assessed each app against five main criteria:
Accuracy. Whether or not names, emails, phone numbers, and any other information listed on the cards were captured correctly.
Ease of use. How intuitive the app was to maneuver around.
Contact storage. How the app handles contact management.
Integration and sharing options. The amount and variety of options available for exporting or syncing contacts with other platforms, such as email clients and CRMs.
Organization. The ability to organize, tag, and group contacts as desired.
Additionally, I looked for apps that had special features, such as multi-card capture, design suites, and company contact management capabilities.
Best business card scanner app for accuracy
BizConnect (Android, iOS)
BizConnect produces the closest I found to perfect scan accuracy. It's the only app that consistently found and linked social media accounts, captured blurry and unusual fonts, and identified words that the others just missed. What's unique about the scanning process here is that it goes through a verification phase to ensure extra accuracy. It took about five minutes for my most difficult business card, but I could still see all the contact info while this verification took place—it's just an added layer of accuracy.
BizConnect is also easy to use and thoughtfully designed to give users plenty of features without feeling overwhelmed. From the Holder screen, you'll find all of your contacts with their card image, name, title, company, and when they were added. Next to each contact is a handy options menu that lets you call, email, and share without having to even open the card. At the top of this screen are color-coded options to export, import, add to CRM, and perform other actions. The scan button is prominently displayed at the bottom.
Clicking Scan gives options to scan a single card (front and back), a QR code, or scan in batch, which means scanning one card after the other. Once scanned, you'll get a processing message, and within a few minutes, you'll have a completed contact. Though it's a bit slower than other apps on this list, it's worth the wait.
In addition to stellar scans, it also comes with task setting, activity tracking, and reports showing daily and monthly leads captured. There's even a barebones CRM where you can add deal stages, tasks, and activities with a revenue feature tracking all won deals. Integrating your CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, and Pipedrive) is easy by connecting your accounts and selecting the contacts you want to export.
Or, if you want to connect to a different app, you can do that with BizConnect's Zapier integrations. Zapier lets you connect BizConnect to thousands of apps, so you can do things like automatically add all new BizConnect business contacts to other apps—and vice versa. Here are a couple examples.
BizConnect price: Free plan can scan up to 600 cards; paid plans from 6.99/user/month
Best iPhone business card scanner for ease of use
Contact Snapper (iOS)
I'll admit, Contact Snapper looks a bit simplistic at first glance, but it definitely packs a punch. If you're looking for a business card scanner for iPhone, this is a good place to start.
For starters, it's the only app I tested that included an automatic, introductory tutorial video. Even though the app is pretty straightforward, it made the process of testing much easier, especially when I forgot how to access a specific feature.
Contact Snapper has a few other standout features that make it really easy to use. For example, when you scan a contact with an address, you can see a map of their location in the contact's profile. You can also send text messages to multiple contacts at once, so if you've collected contacts with the app and want to message for your business, or just to organize an event, it's a quick click to do so.
My favorite feature, though, was the ability to copy and paste contact details. Let's say you want to take someone's name, phone number, and address from their email signature and get it into the app. Instead of having to enter all that information manually, you can just copy the contact info from the email, go back to Contact Snapper, hit the paste button, and the app will automatically sort all the details into a contact.
Contact Snapper price: Free; $4.99 one-time charge for premium
Best free business card scanner app
Haystack (iOS, Android)
Haystack was by far the most advanced app I tested when it comes to contact details. It doesn't just scan and store the information from a business card; it also goes out of its way to find more information on the web. For example, once I scanned my first card, it presented me with a series of company logos associated with the website listed on the card and asked me to pick one. The app even created a digital card from the scan, and it used the colors from the logo as a color scheme for the contact profile.
Haystack is big on the visuals, so if you like to actually see all your cards instead of just text and names, you'll be happy to see digital representations of all the cards in your deck. You can even create your own digital card with Haystack and share it with others via email, SMS, and QR code. If you needed to, you could also share other people's contact info this way.
The Contact Syncing feature proved to be very useful: it lets you sync any of your Haystack contacts to your phone's contacts app. I was also able to make edits to the contacts after the fact and see those edits updated within my phone's main contacts app—pretty nifty.
Beyond these features, the app doesn't offer much as far as integrations or contact grouping, but for a free app (that's also ad-free), Haystack is a solid choice.
Haystack price: Free
Best all-in-one business card reader app
CamCard (Android, iOS, Web)
Out of all the business card scanning apps that made this list, CamCard was actually the least accurate, with about 80-90% accuracy for my easiest-to-scan card. (There is a human proofreading option, but that seems like overkill.) Having said that, the app made up for the lapses in accuracy with other aspects.
With paper cards, I've always felt stuck between having to settle with either one very generalized business card or one specific business card for my main venture. I wished business cards could be more dynamic—and with CamCard, they are. If you wear multiple hats or work in different industries, you can create multiple digital cards on CamCard to represent all your various roles. Then, when it's time to share, you can pull up a QR code or link, or you can download the QR code with a picture of your digital card, email and text your card, or share the card via Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp.
Another unique feature is the ability to view insights about your card—namely, how many times your card has been viewed, shared, and saved, and how many new connections you've made within a day, a week, or the last 30 days. If you're trying to meet a goal as far as making connections, this aspect of the app will help you stay on track.
CamCard also makes it easy to delete duplicate contacts, send text messages, or even send reminders. The reminder feature isn't as advanced as Covve (the next app on the list); with CamCard, you can only set a specific date and time, but it's still a nice option to have. You can also automatically sync your contacts to Salesforce, Google Contacts, or Outlook by tapping Smart Sync at the bottom to log in and access the accounts you want to use.
Overall, despite some hiccups with accuracy, I felt CamCard was the most versatile, especially for a small business professional.
CamCard price: Free plan available; paid plans from $5.99/user/month
Best business card reader app for maintaining relationships
Covve (iOS, Android)
Do you ever struggle with remembering to follow up with people? I definitely do, which is why I was delighted to discover that Covve not only scans business cards and stores your contacts, but it also helps you maintain your relationships with these contacts.
When it comes to communication, Covve gives you the option to contact people via call, SMS, email, and WhatsApp. Then, after you've communicated, you can mark people that you've contacted recently, so you know who you've covered and who still needs some attention. Once you've scanned and saved a contact, you can also take advantage of the auto-remind option so that you can set a duration for how often you want to reach out to someone. You can do this by frequency, like every week, or you can pick a specific week on the calendar. The app will also let you know which reminders are coming up during the current week, which reminders are in the future, and it'll also let you know if you missed any reminders. It's like a little CRM.
Because it isn't your typical business card scanning or contact storage app, Covve doesn't hold contacts in one place alphabetically or by date added like some other apps. In fact, it classifies contacts as "relationships." When you scan in one of these new relationships, the app will automatically add a reminder alert for every three months, but it'll also ask you when you last spoke to the contact. From there, you can add tags or any other general notes.
As far as scanning accuracy goes, even my most difficult business card was transcribed correctly with minimal effort, which was just the cherry on top of this already very solid app.
Plus, you can use Zapier to connect Covve to thousands of other apps, so you can automatically create new contacts in your other apps whenever you scan a card into Covve. Here are a couple of examples to get you started.
Covve price: Free plan gives you 20 contacts, auto-reminders, activity logs, and tagging; $12.99/month or $119.99/year for the Pro plan which comes with unlimited everything
Other ways to scan business cards
Only occasionally need to scan business cards? You actually might not need a dedicated app just for cards. Instead, you could use the scanner tools built into an app you already use to capture cards and copy text—and then manually save contacts to your address book.
Evernote Scannable. The popular notebook app Evernote happens to also be one of the best ways to scan business cards. Add a new photo as a note, and Evernote will usually automatically recognize documents and business cards and snap them with its document scanner mode. It'll be stored as a Business Card note in Evernote, with fields for the contact info along with a picture of the card and any notes you want. You can then save the contact to your address book or have Evernote remind you to stay in touch.
OneNote. Then there's OneNote, Microsoft's alternative to Evernote. Using its companion Microsoft Office Lens app, you can scan business cards and other documents and save them to your OneNote notebook for free. On your Mac or Windows desktop, you can then right-click on the business card scans in OneNote and copy the text, then add it to your address book.
Google Lens. If you're an Android user, Google Lens is built into most newer phones, and this feature can also capture QR codes. Take a picture of your card, tap the Lens icon, and save to your phone's contacts.
ABBYY. On top of being a highly accurate scanning app, ABBYY Business Card Reader is a great choice for businesses and more specifically Salesforce users. Plus, you can create your own business card QR code for quick, digital sharing.
ScanBizCards. ScanBizCards is heavy on exporting contacts whether to a CRM or your phone's contacts app, but you'll find plenty of integrations at your disposal, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, or even Outlook and Evernote.
ScanContacts. The ultimate free business scanning app for HubSpot users is ScanContacts. You will need to sign into your HubSpot to use the app, but once you're in, you can count on ScanContacts to automatically save all your new scanned contacts into the CRM.
Google Drive or other OCR tool. You could also use a dedicated scanner app or the OCR tool built into Google Drive. Those apps can work well at recognizing text—though again, you'll need to do the hard work of copying the recognized text and putting it to work.
CRM. If your team uses a CRM app to manage your contacts and customers, its mobile app may have business card scanning built-in. HubSpot CRM, Zoho CRM, Insightly, Nutshell, and noCRM, among others, include business card scanning in their mobile apps. Zoho's scanner's accuracy is very good, but the app is standalone and not included in the CRM app. HubSpot's app, on the other hand, includes the scanner in its mobile CRM app (as do Nutshell and noCRM) and is free forever.
So before you add another app to your stack, it's worth checking to see if an app you already have will do the trick.
Originally published in November 2017 by Matthew Guay, this article also has contributions from Hannah Herman and Chris Hawkins. The most recent update was in December 2022.