Turbo Fax: send fax from phone

Review by eFreeware

There are still documents that insist on arriving by fax: signed contracts, insurance forms, ID copies for an office that never modernized. If you don't own a fax machine, the usual workaround is a print-scan-fax chain at a copy shop. Turbo Fax is built to remove that trip: it lets an Android phone scan a document or take an existing PDF and send it as a fax.

It first appeared in November 2016 and was updated in November 2024 for newer Android versions, so it isn't a project that was abandoned after launch.

Scanning is the part that decides whether a fax looks professional

The feature the developer leads with is the scanner, and it's the one that matters most. A phone photo of a page is rarely straight, evenly lit or free of shadows, and that shows up on the receiving end. Scan mode straightens and crops each page automatically, cleans up shadows, and outputs black-on-white contrast. In practice, that means a form photographed on a desk should arrive looking like it came off a flatbed rather than a phone.

The app handles multipage documents, so a contract with several pages can be scanned in one pass rather than sent as separate faxes. If you already have the document as a PDF, you can skip scanning entirely and pull it in from Mail, a cloud app or your gallery.

That combination covers the two realistic cases: paper in your hand that needs to become a fax, and a file you already have that just needs to be sent. The first fax page is free, which the developer offers so you can try the service before paying.

Cover page, notifications and a resend archive

Around the sending itself, Turbo Fax adds the pieces you'd expect from a fax service. There's a professional cover page, which matters when a fax goes to an office where the first sheet is what gets routed to the right desk. After sending, the app provides delivery notifications, so you aren't left guessing whether the transmission went through.

Sent faxes go into an archive, and anything in it can be resent. That's useful for the recurring paperwork that shows up every few months: a renewal form or a standing document that needs to go to the same number again. Rather than rescanning, you resend from the archive.

The developer also notes that purchased fax pages never expire and are available on all your devices, so a package bought on one phone isn't stranded there if you switch handsets later.

What it asks of you: page packages and a destination number

Turbo Fax is free to install and carries no ads, but sending beyond the first free page costs money through in-app purchases. The developer's model is page packages rather than credits, and the price per page runs from $0.30 to $0.75 depending on the size of the package you buy. That's a straightforward structure: you know what a page costs before you send it.

International faxing is priced the same as domestic. The app reaches more than 40 countries at one rate, which removes the usual guesswork about whether an overseas fax will cost several times more. If you send documents abroad even occasionally, that flat pricing is the detail worth remembering.

Beyond that, you need a document and a fax number to send it to. The app is a sending tool for the documents you scan or import; the recipient's fax machine, or their fax service, does the rest.

How to get the most out of it

Use the free first page to test the whole path with a real document before you buy anything. Scan a page you'd actually send, check how the edges, shadows and contrast come out, and send it to a number you can verify. That tells you whether the scanner handles your typical paperwork well enough to trust with a signed form.

For anything you already have as a PDF, import it rather than printing and rescanning. The result is cleaner, and it saves the step that would otherwise send you looking for a printer. For paper documents, scan in good light and let the edge detection and perspective correction do their work rather than fighting to hold the page perfectly flat.

Think about package size against your actual volume. If you fax a few pages a year, the smallest package at the higher per-page rate is still cheaper than owning and maintaining a fax line. If you send regularly, the larger packages bring the per-page cost down toward $0.30. Since purchased pages don't expire, buying in bulk isn't wasted if your sending is spread across months.

When something goes wrong, the developer provides an email address, [email protected], for problems and questions. Reaching out directly is the route they point to.

A phone-based fax tool for occasional senders

Turbo Fax solves a narrow problem well: getting a document from your phone to a fax number without a fax machine, a scanner or a trip to a copy shop. The scanner's edge detection, perspective correction and shadow removal address the part most likely to make a phone-scanned fax look sloppy, and the cover page, delivery notifications and resend archive cover the practical details around sending.

The costs are clear rather than hidden: the first page is free, and after that you buy page packages at $0.30 to $0.75 per page, with the same rate for domestic and international destinations across more than 40 countries. Purchased pages don't expire and work across your devices, which softens the commitment if your faxing is sporadic.

It suits people who send the occasional form, ID or signed document and want it done from the phone in their pocket. If your faxing is frequent and heavy, the per-page cost is worth weighing against whatever alternative you already have. For everyone else, the free first page is a low-risk way to find out whether the scanner handles your documents the way you need.

What's new in version 1.0.13

Updated to support newer versions of Android