These aren't two scan types you pick between, and a premium scan isn't a "better" scan you can buy. They describe two different things:
- AI scan — what every document scan is. When you upload a receipt or invoice, SparkReceipt reads it and extracts the vendor, date, total, tax, currency, and so on. Every scan does this, and every scan counts against your plan's monthly document quota.
- Premium scan — a scan that also breaks out the individual line items on the document, so each product or service gets captured and categorized separately rather than just the total.
So a premium scan is an AI scan with line-item extraction on top. There's no setting to switch between them — whether line items get extracted depends on your plan.
Who gets line-item extraction
- Elite — line items are extracted from every document, with no limit.
- Other plans — you get 5 premium scans to try it out. Those 5 are a one-time trial for the whole account, not a monthly allowance and not 5 per person. If you use linked accounts, the trial is shared across the whole group.
While you still have trials left, the app shows how many remain. Once they're used up, scanning keeps working exactly as before — you just get the document-level data (vendor, date, total, tax) without the per-line breakdown.
What this costs
Nothing extra, and premium scans aren't a credit concept — you can't buy premium scans with credits. Line-item extraction is included with Elite and otherwise limited to the 5-scan trial. Credits are a separate system, used for scanning beyond your monthly document quota and for bank statement extraction; see How does the monthly credit system work?.
When line items are worth it
Line-item extraction matters most when a single receipt mixes things that need to be booked separately — a supermarket run with both office supplies and personal groceries, or a hardware invoice covering several projects. If your receipts are mostly single-purpose, the document-level total is usually all you need.
See Can SparkReceipt categorize individual line items from my receipts? for how extracted line items behave once they're in.