---
title: "How to scan a document without a watermark"
description: "Scan to PDF without an app watermark stamped across the page, and add your own watermark only when you actually want one."
canonical: "https://spirikle.com/blog/scan-a-document-without-a-watermark/"
last-updated: "2026-08-25"
---

# How to scan a document without a watermark

Scan Clan does not stamp anything on your scans. There is no watermark to remove and no upgrade that takes it off, because there is no paid tier here for it to belong to. If you want a watermark — "COPY", "DRAFT", your own name — you can add one deliberately.

By Abhishek Chauhan · 25 August 2026 · 1 min read · [How-to guides](/blog/category/how-to-guides/)

## Step by step

### 1. Open the document menu

And choose Watermark.

### 2. Type the text

Whatever it needs to say — "COPY", "DRAFT", a name, a date.

### 3. Set how it looks

Colour, size, angle and opacity are all yours to choose, so it can be a faint diagonal wash or a solid stamp in a corner.

### 4. Save it

The watermark is applied to the document you export.

## Why other scans come out watermarked

A watermark stamped by the app is usually a pricing decision rather than a technical one: the scan is held slightly hostage until a subscription removes the mark. Scan Clan has no paid tier to move anything into, so the question does not arise. Unlimited scans, unlimited documents, and nothing printed across them.

If you have scans that already carry a watermark another app stamped on them, it is part of the image now and cannot be cleanly removed by any tool. Re-scanning the original paper is the honest fix.

## What else is not held back

Text recognition, merging, splitting, compressing, signing, password-protected export with AES-256, printing, and cloud sync across your devices are all simply part of the app. There is no free tier and paid tier here; there is one tier, and it costs nothing. See [pricing](/pricing/) for the whole list.

See also: [how to sign a PDF on your phone](/blog/sign-a-pdf-on-your-phone/).

**About the author: Abhishek Chauhan.** Founder of Spirikle and the maker of Scan Clan, a free document scanner app.

## Continue reading

- [How to sign a PDF on your phone](https://spirikle.com/blog/sign-a-pdf-on-your-phone/) — You do not need to print, sign and re-scan. Open the PDF in Scan Clan, add your signature, and send it back. You can draw the signature on the screen, or photograph one you wrote on paper and Scan Clan will lift it off the page.
- [How to scan a document to PDF on Android](https://spirikle.com/blog/scan-documents-to-pdf-on-android/) — Open Scan Clan, point the camera at the page, and let it find the edges. It straightens the photo, evens out the lighting, and gives you a PDF you can send. The whole thing takes about fifteen seconds per page.
- [How to remove glare and shadows from a scanned page](https://spirikle.com/blog/remove-glare-and-shadows-from-a-scan/) — Two things ruin a phone scan: the shadow you cast over the page, and the bright patch a lamp leaves on glossy paper. Scan Clan has a filter for each — No Shadow and Glare Removal — and a few centimetres of movement prevents both.

> **Scan Clan** is our free document scanner app for Android: it turns paper into clean, straight PDFs with your camera, and can sign, compress and share them — no ads and no subscription. [Get it on Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spirikle.scanclan). For quick jobs on a computer, try the [free PDF and image tools](/tools/).

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_Scan Clan · https://spirikle.com/blog/scan-a-document-without-a-watermark/ · published by Spirikle · support@spirikle.com_