The short answer: Readiris PDF 27 costs $79 for the Essential edition and $149 for the Elite edition on the IRIS US store, each a one time perpetual license for one PC or Mac. The store shows both against higher list prices of $129 and $189. Teams buy Elite in volume packs: $581 for 5 computers, $1,073 for 10, $2,235 for 25 and $4,023 for 50, each with one year of maintenance and support. The old Readiris Pro and Readiris Corporate names belong to Readiris 17 and earlier.
Readiris is one of the cheapest serious OCR and PDF editors you can buy outright, and for a lot of offices that settles it. The more useful question before you pay is what you are buying it for. If you need to edit, sign and scan PDFs on a few desks, the prices below are the whole story. If the main job is getting scanned statements and invoices into Excel tables, the license is the small number and the cleanup time is the big one, which is covered near the end.
How much does Readiris cost?
These are the prices on the IRIS US store when we checked it. IRIS runs frequent promotions, so the struck list price is shown next to each edition and the checkout price can move.
| Edition | US store price | List price shown | License |
|---|---|---|---|
| Readiris PDF 27 Essential | $79 | $129 | One time, 1 PC or Mac |
| Readiris PDF 27 Elite | $149 | $189 | One time, 1 PC or Mac |
| Elite 5 license pack | $581 | One time, 5 computers, 1 year maintenance | |
| Elite 10 license pack | $1,073 | One time, 10 computers, 1 year maintenance | |
| Elite 25 license pack | $2,235 | One time, 25 computers, 1 year maintenance | |
| Elite 50 license pack | $4,023 | One time, 50 computers, 1 year maintenance | |
| 100+ corporate or academic | Quote | Contact IRIS sales |
Every edition runs on Windows 10 and 11 (64 bit) and macOS 11 up to macOS 26, reads text in 138 OCR languages, and comes with a free trial download and a 30 day money back guarantee.
What happened to Readiris Pro and Readiris Corporate?
Readiris Pro and Readiris Corporate were the two editions of Readiris 17 and the versions before it, and they are still what many people search for. The current product is Readiris PDF, now at version 27, sold as Essential and Elite. Essential takes the place Pro used to hold for individuals, and Elite plays the Corporate role with batch automation and volume licensing. The Pro and Corporate names do not appear on the US product pages we checked, so a quote for "Readiris Corporate" today will be a Readiris PDF Elite license.
If you still run Readiris 17, it keeps working, since the license is perpetual. IRIS sells upgrades to the current version at a loyalty price, which is cheaper than a new license.
Readiris PDF Essential vs Elite, what the extra $70 buys
Both editions scan, OCR, convert to Word, Excel and PowerPoint, edit text, annotate, fill forms and batch convert files. Elite adds the features an office uses when paper arrives in volume:
- Barcode extraction and smart page separation, so a stack scanned as one file splits into separate documents.
- Automated file naming from the content of each document.
- PDF/A for long term archiving.
- Multiple e-signatures, redaction and attachments.
- Export to cloud storage such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Box and OneDrive.
For one person converting the occasional scan, Essential is enough. Anyone feeding a scanner every day will want Elite for page separation alone, and the volume packs are Elite only.
Readiris volume license pricing per seat
The packs get cheaper per computer as they grow, which is the normal shape for perpetual desktop software.
| Pack | Total | Per computer | Saving vs single Elite at $149 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 licenses | $581 | $116.20 | 22 percent |
| 10 licenses | $1,073 | $107.30 | 28 percent |
| 25 licenses | $2,235 | $89.40 | 40 percent |
| 50 licenses | $4,023 | $80.46 | 46 percent |
Two things to budget beyond the pack. Maintenance and support are included for the first year only, and a license is tied to a computer, so replacing laptops or adding staff means tracking activations or buying more seats.
Is Readiris a one-time purchase?
Yes. IRIS sells Readiris PDF as a perpetual license with no subscription and says so on every product page. You own the version you bought and can keep using it. What you do not get forever is new major versions: those are sold as upgrades, so the real long term cost is the license plus whatever upgrades you choose to buy as Windows and macOS move on.
Can Readiris convert PDF to Excel?
Yes. Excel is one of the Readiris output formats, for scans and digital PDFs alike, and batch conversion handles a folder at a time. Like most OCR suites, it reads the page and rebuilds it as a spreadsheet. That is worth testing on your own documents, because financial paperwork is where page rebuilds tend to need fixing: headers repeated on every page, a table split where the page breaks, and amounts like (2,750.00) arriving as text that a SUM ignores.
Run your three ugliest files through the Readiris trial and try to total a column straight away. If it works, Readiris at $79 to $149 is a bargain. If you spend ten minutes per file deleting rows and fixing numbers, keep reading.
When Readiris is the right buy, and when it is not
| Your situation | Better fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| One person, a few scans a month, also edits and signs PDFs | Readiris Essential | $79 once covers it, no recurring cost |
| Office scanning paper all day, needs files split and named | Readiris Elite | Page separation and auto naming for $149 per seat |
| Five people turning scanned statements and invoices into Excel tables every week | A table converter | Cleanup minutes per file cost more than the license |
| Conversions must run from your own scripts or systems | An API service | Readiris product pages list no web API |
| Files must never leave your own computers | Readiris | Desktop software, works offline |
The third row is where we come in. PDFXLSX is built only for the table part: it finds each table in a PDF or scan, keeps one header, joins rows that run across pages and writes dates and amounts as real values, so the column totals the moment the file opens. The OCR PDF to Excel converter handles scans, and the bank statement PDF to Excel page covers the document most offices fight with. Starter is $49 a month for 50 files, Plus is $99 a month for 500 files and 5 seats, and Pro at $199 adds unlimited files and the API. Yearly billing halves those monthly figures, and the full list is on the pricing page.
That is more than a Readiris license over a year, and we say so on our Readiris alternative page. It pays off only when the hours saved are real, which is why the first step is testing both on the same files. Once the statements are clean in Excel, the next job for most bookkeepers is matching them against the ledger, and dedicated reconciliation software takes that part off your hands too.
How does Readiris compare with ABBYY FineReader on price?
Readiris is the cheaper of the two desktop OCR suites over time. Readiris PDF Elite is $149 once, while ABBYY sells FineReader PDF as a subscription, $99 a year for Standard and $165 a year for Corporate per user, so Readiris costs less from the second year on. FineReader is often chosen for OCR accuracy on difficult scans and its document compare tool. Our ABBYY FineReader pricing breakdown has the current FineReader figures if you are pricing both. The third desktop option, Tungsten OmniPage, is Windows only at $149 for Standard and $499 for Ultimate, covered in our OmniPage Ultimate price guide.
Is there a free version of Readiris?
No. IRIS offers a free trial download of Readiris PDF and a 30 day money back guarantee, but the product itself is paid. The trial is the right way to test Excel output on your own scans before buying, and the same applies to any converter on your shortlist, including ours, which gives a new account three whole files to test.