Scanner recommendations

As Paperless operates by watching a folder for new files, doesn’t care what scanner you use, but sometimes finding a scanner that will write to an FTP, NFS, or SMB server can be difficult. This page is here to help you find one that works right for you based on recommendations from other Paperless users.

Physical scanners

Brand

Model

Supports

Recommended By

FTP

SFTP

NFS

SMB

SMTP

API 1

Brother

ADS-1700W

yes

yes

yes

yes

holzhannes

Brother

ADS-1600W

yes

yes

yes

holzhannes

Brother

ADS-1500W

yes

yes

yes

danielquinn

Brother

ADS-1100W

yes

ytzelf

Brother

ADS-2800W

yes

yes

yes

yes

philpagel

Brother

MFC-J6930DW

yes

ayounggun

Brother

MFC-L5850DW

yes

yes

holzhannes

Brother

MFC-L2750DW

yes

yes

yes

muued

Brother

MFC-J5910DW

yes

bmsleight

Brother

MFC-8950DW

yes

yes

yes

philpagel

Brother

MFC-9142CDN

yes

yes

REOLDEV

Canon

Maxify MB 5350

yes 2

yes

eingemaischt

Fujitsu

ix500

yes

yes

eonist

Epson

ES-580W

yes

yes

yes

fignew

Epson

WF-7710DWF

yes

yes

Skylinar

Fujitsu

S1300i

yes

yes

jonaswinkler

Doxie

Q2

yes

Unkn0wnCat
1

Scanners with API Integration allow to push scanned documents directly to Paperless API, sometimes referred to as Webhook or Document POST.

2

Canon Multi Function Printers show strange behavior over SMB. They close and reopen the file after every page. It’s recommended to tune the polling and inotify configuration values for your scanner. The scanner timeout is 3 minutes, so 180 is a good starting point.

Mobile phone software

You can use your phone to “scan” documents. The regular camera app will work, but may have too low contrast for OCR to work well. Apps specifically for scanning are recommended.

Name

OS

Supports

Recommended By

FTP

NFS

SMB

Email

WebDAV

Office Lens

Android

?

?

?

?

?

jonaswinkler

Genius Scan

Android

yes

no

yes

yes

yes

hannahswain

OpenScan

Android

no

no

no

no

no

benjaminfrank

OCR Scanner - QuickScan

iOS

no

no

no

no

yes

holzhannes

On Android, you can use these applications in combination with one of the Paperless-ngx compatible apps to “Share” the documents produced by these scanner apps with paperless. On iOS, you can share the scanned documents via iOS-Sharing to other mail, WebDav or FTP apps.

There is also an iOS Shortcut that allows you to directly upload text, PDF and image documents available here: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/d234abc0885040129d9d75fa45fe1154 Please note this only works for documents downloaded to iCloud / the device, in other words not directly from a URL.

API Scanning Setup

This sections contains information on how to set up scanners to post directly to Paperless API.

Doxie Q2

This part assumes your Doxie is connected to WiFi and you know its IP.

  1. Open your Doxie web UI by navigating to its IP address

  2. Navigate to Options -> Webhook

  3. Set the URL to https://[your-paperless-ngx-instance]/api/documents/post_document/

  4. Set the File Parameter Name to document

  5. Add the username and password to the respective fields (Consider creating a user just for your Doxie)

  6. Click Submit at the bottom of the page

Congrats, you can now scan directly from your Doxie to your Paperless-ngx instance!