Comparison
Met vs ABBYY Business Card Reader
Credit where it is due: ABBYY makes the most accurate, most private card scanner in the category, from a company that has done optical character recognition for decades. Met does not try to win that contest. Met scans too, and then does the entire part ABBYY was never built to do.
Pick ABBYY if all you want is a precise, on-device digitizer that turns cards into clean contacts and exports them, with a one-time price and no follow-up layer. Pick Met if the scan is the start, not the end: you also want the context of the conversation kept and the follow-up drafted. Both are private. Only one of them helps you actually reconnect.
Side by side
| Met | ABBYY BCR | |
|---|---|---|
| Scan accuracy / OCR | Strong (Apple Vision) | Best in class, decades of OCR |
| Keeps the context | Yes, notes + tags + where you met | Minimal, a notes field |
| Drafts the follow-up | Yes | No |
| Reminders / cadence | Yes (Pro) | No |
| Privacy posture | Contacts in your iCloud | On-device by default |
| Platforms | iPhone | iPhone, web (Android discontinued) |
| Pricing | Free + $6.99/mo or $49.99/yr | Pro $59.99 one-time; free tier limited to 15 cards |
Prices and platform support verified from the App Store and ABBYY's site in June 2026 and can change. ABBYY and Business Card Reader are trademarks of their owner and are not affiliated with or endorsing Met.
A perfect contact record is not a relationship
ABBYY solves digitization better than almost anyone. Point it at a busy card in another language and it will hand you a clean, correctly-parsed contact. If that is the entire job you have, you should probably buy it, and the one-time price is fair.
But a contact record, however perfect, is inert. It does not remember that you and this person spent ten minutes on the same hard problem. It does not nudge you on day two, while the conversation is still fresh, to send the note that turns a scan into a relationship. ABBYY hands you back to your own discipline at exactly the moment discipline fails, three days later, when the card is the only thing left and the conversation it stood for has evaporated. Met keeps the conversation with the contact and drafts the message, so the accuracy of the scan is in service of something, not the whole story.
See the part a scanner stops short of.
The free follow-up generator drafts the message ABBYY leaves to you. A name, a place, one detail, and you have something to send. No account, nothing stored.
Open the free follow-up generatorWhere ABBYY is the better choice
Honestly stated: if you want maximum scan accuracy across many languages, processed privately on your device, with a one-time purchase and no subscription on the Pro tier, ABBYY is the better pick and Met is not pretending otherwise. Its OCR pedigree is real, and for a minimalist who just wants cards turned into clean contacts and nothing else, it is close to ideal.
Met earns the pick when the scan is step one of a longer job, capturing the context and getting the follow-up out, rather than the end of it. If you never follow up and just need an address book filled accurately, ABBYY. If the follow-up is the thing you keep failing to do, Met.
Questions
Is Met an ABBYY Business Card Reader alternative?
If you want only an accurate, private card digitizer, ABBYY is excellent and Met is not trying to beat it at that. Met is an alternative when you want the rest of the job: keeping the context of who you met and drafting the follow-up. ABBYY stops at the contact record; Met starts there.
Does ABBYY Business Card Reader help with follow-up?
No. ABBYY is a scanner. It turns a card into an accurate contact and exports it to your address book or CRM, and that is the end of its job. There is no follow-up cadence, no reminders, no drafted message. Met is built around exactly that part.
Is ABBYY Business Card Reader private?
Yes, and this is a point in its favor: ABBYY processes cards on-device by default and the non-Pro version removed cloud sync. Met is also private, storing contacts in your own iCloud. On privacy these two are close; the real difference is that Met also does the follow-up.
Keep comparing: the full buyer's guide scores Met, ABBYY, Covve, CamCard, and Dex on one rubric, or see all comparisons.