A receipt scanner app reads a photograph of a bill and turns it into an expense entry, so you do not type the amount in yourself. Finly is a free one. You photograph the bill, the text is read on your own device, and Finly shows you the amount, date, currency and merchant it found for you to confirm or correct before anything is saved.
The scan is unlimited and costs nothing. There is no monthly cap on how many bills you can read, no account required to try it, and no bank connection anywhere in the app.
What it pulls off a bill
Four fields, which are the ones that turn a photo into an expense:
- Amount: the total, not the line items
- Currency: kept as it is found; Finly never converts between currencies
- Date: the date on the bill, not the date you scanned it
- Merchant: the shop or biller name, when the layout makes it findable
Everything else on the receipt is ignored on purpose. Reading every line item off a supermarket till roll is a different and much less reliable job, and getting the total wrong to gain a list of groceries is a bad trade.
It always asks before saving
The scan produces a filled form, not a saved expense. You see what it read, with the confidence it had, and you can correct any field before it is written. Nothing is stored from a scan you do not confirm.
This matters more for scanning than for typing, because OCR fails in ways that look plausible. A 3 read as an 8 produces a number that is wrong but entirely believable, and the only defence is that a person looked at it.
PDF bills, not just photographs
Utility bills, bank statements and invoices usually arrive as PDFs rather than paper. Finly accepts those directly. If the PDF has a real text layer, the text is read from it, which is both faster and more accurate than looking at a picture of it. If it is a scan with no text layer, the page is rendered and read the same way a photograph is.
Several bills at once
A month of receipts collected in a drawer is the normal case, not a single bill. You can select several at a time and review them as a set, then save the ones that read correctly. The totals are shown per currency, one line each, since nothing is converted.
Where the image goes, stated plainly
Nowhere. The OCR engine, the language model it uses and the code that runs them are all served from Finly's own domain and execute inside your browser tab. The photograph is never uploaded, and neither is the text read from it. There is no server that sees your receipts, because there is no server involved in reading them.
This is the same position as the rest of the app: Finly has no bank connection, and does not ask for a bank login at any point.
Where it falls short
Worth knowing before you rely on it:
- English only. The text-recognition model shipped with Finly reads English. A bill printed only in Urdu or Arabic script will not read well.
- The first scan is a slow one. The engine is roughly 50 MB and downloads the first time you scan, then stays cached. It is deliberately not part of the app's normal download, so people who never scan never pay for it.
- Photo quality decides the result. A creased, dim or angled receipt reads badly. Flat, lit and square is the difference between a usable scan and a retype.
- Faint thermal receipts are the hardest case. The ones that have started to fade are often unreadable to OCR, and sometimes to people.
- It reads the total, not the basket. If you need per-item breakdowns, this will not give you them.
The rest of the app
Scanning is one way into Finly rather than the whole of it. You can also say an expense out loud and have it filled in, type it normally, keep a khata of money lent and borrowed, and track Pakistan Stock Exchange holdings. It works offline and is free.
Common questions
Is the receipt scanner free?
Yes, and there is no cap on how many bills you scan. Several receipt scanner apps limit the free tier to about ten scans a month; Finly does not limit it at all, because the scanning costs nothing to run when it happens on your own device.
Are my receipt photos uploaded anywhere?
No. The recognition runs inside your browser. The image is never sent to a server, and neither is the text read from it. There is no upload step to opt out of, because there is no upload.
Do I need an account to scan a bill?
No. You can scan and save expenses without signing up. An account is only for syncing between devices, and even then Finly syncs to a server run by its own developer rather than a third-party cloud.
Does it work offline?
Yes, after the first scan. The recognition engine downloads once and is cached, and from then on scanning works with no connection at all, since nothing needs to be sent anywhere.
Can it read PDF bills?
Yes. If the PDF contains a text layer, Finly reads the text directly, which is more accurate than reading a picture. If it is a scanned image with no text layer, the page is rendered and read like a photograph.
Can I scan more than one bill at a time?
Yes. Select several, review them together, and save the ones that read correctly. Totals are shown separately for each currency, because Finly never converts between them.
What if it reads the amount wrong?
You correct it before saving. The scan always produces a form for you to confirm, never a saved entry, and the confidence of the reading is shown so a doubtful one is obvious.
Does it read receipts in Urdu?
Not reliably. The model that ships with Finly reads English. Many Pakistani receipts print amounts and dates in English digits even when the rest is Urdu, and those parts usually read, but a fully Urdu bill will not. Voice entry does support Urdu if typing is what you are trying to avoid.
Scan a bill and see what it reads
Nothing installs, nothing uploads, and you can throw the result away if it gets it wrong.
Open Finly, it is free