Brother iPrint&Scan vs NAPS2

Brother iPrint&Scan lets owners of supported Brother machines print from and scan to the machine using mobile devices or computers. On mobile, it can print photos, documents, and web pages; the Android FAQ also lists Gmail and cloud services. Depending on the platform, scans can be saved to the device or cloud storage, emailed, or opened in other apps. The iOS listing names Dropbox, OneDrive, and Evernote for printing, and iCloud as a scan destination. On supported newer models, mobile features may include image editing, fax sending and preview, copy preview, and machine status. Windows and macOS provide detailed scan controls, and users can save settings as reusable Workflows. The app is free, with listed output formats of PDF and JPEG, and support for OCR and ADF. Brother lists Windows 7 or later and macOS 10.10 or later. Printing and scanning are not available on every Brother machine; mobile devices must be on the same Wi-Fi network as the machine.

NAPS2 is free, open-source software for scanning documents and saving them as PDF, TIFF, JPEG, or PNG. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and supports WIA and TWAIN drivers with flatbed or automatic document feeder scanners, including duplex scanning. Users can reorder, interleave, rotate, crop, deskew, and adjust scanned pages’ brightness and contrast. OCR makes scans searchable, supports more than 100 languages, and can add text recognition to imported PDFs. NAPS2 can share scanners across a local network using ESCL, including with compatible Android and iPhone apps, but it must remain running on the server for sharing to work. It can send email through Gmail and Outlook, with the email address and secure sending token kept on the user’s computer and sent only to the relevant provider. Optional developer tools include a command-line interface for automation and a .NET scanning library. The free plan has no ads or restrictions, though OCR results cannot be saved directly to a text file.