Plenty of "best LiDAR app" lists are written by people who never priced a job. Here's ours — and full disclosure, we make Scanstead, so read with that in mind. Our filter is a contractor's: what deliverable does each app produce, and how fast is it in your hand?
The quick table
| App | Core deliverable | Processing | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scanstead | Measurements, floor plans, whole-house 3D | On device, instant | Bids and takeoffs |
| Polycam | Textured 3D meshes, many export formats | On device / cloud | Visualization, 3D assets |
| magicplan | Floor plans + sketching, estimate add-ons | On device | Guided plan drawing |
| Canvas | Scan-to-CAD (Revit, SketchUp, AutoCAD) | Cloud service, turnaround time | Architects needing CAD |
| CubiCasa | 2D/3D floor plans, ANSI-aligned GLA reports | Cloud, hours-scale delivery | Appraisers, listings |
| RoomScan Pro | Fast floor plans, CAD handoff | On device | Quick schematic plans |
| Matterport | Hosted 3D tours / digital twins | Cloud, hosted | Marketing, large-property docs |
The one-paragraph honest take on each
Scanstead (ours) captures parametrically: walls, doors, windows, and rooms as measured objects, merged into a whole-house model with per-room takeoffs, floor plans, and USDZ export — extracted on the phone the moment the scan ends. It's built for one job: leave the walkthrough with the numbers a bid needs. It is not the tool for photorealistic art assets or hosted marketing tours.
Polycam is the standout for detailed textured meshes with flexible exports (OBJ, GLB, FBX, USDZ). Designers and 3D artists love it, and rightly so. Measurement means picking points on a mesh — fine occasionally, slow as a takeoff workflow.
magicplan is the veteran of guided floor-plan capture, now LiDAR-assisted, with sketching and estimating add-ons. Strong when you want to draw — including spaces that don't exist yet. As we've written before, declared geometry depends on the operator in a way observed geometry doesn't.
Canvas targets the scan-to-CAD pipeline: capture on device, get back professional Revit/SketchUp/AutoCAD files. If your deliverable is a CAD model for design work, it's the pragmatic choice — the trade-off is a service turnaround between scanning and holding the file.
CubiCasa owns the appraisal-and-listing lane: cloud-processed floor plans with ANSI-aligned GLA reports, delivered on an hours timescale. For appraisers that compliance focus is the product. It's a reporting pipeline more than a field-measurement tool.
RoomScan Pro is the quick-plan specialist — one of the original wall-touch floor plan apps, now LiDAR-equipped, with CAD handoff. Lightweight and fast for schematic plans; less suited to full-house measured models.
Matterport produces the most polished hosted walkthroughs in the business. For marketing a property or documenting a large facility, it earns its ecosystem. For a Tuesday-afternoon bid, capture-process-host is overhead between you and a wall length.
How to actually choose
Ignore feature lists; name your deliverable. CAD file → Canvas. GLA report → CubiCasa. Marketing tour → Matterport. Mesh for design → Polycam. Sketching a proposed layout → magicplan. A priced bid before you leave the driveway → that's the job Scanstead was built for, and the only one on this list where we'll claim the crown.