Scanning apartments comes with its own challenges. You have small rooms, narrow doorways, lots of units, and usually need a measured floor plan instead of a super-precise point cloud. Because of this, expensive hardware often isn’t necessary, and using a phone is the best option more often than people think.
The Options Compared
What Apartment As-Builts Actually Require
What accuracy do apartment as-builts need?
Begin by answering this question, since it shapes all your other choices. Most apartment as-builts result in a floor plan showing room sizes, wall locations, openings, and total area. These are used for things like renovations, leasing, appraisals, or facility records. You don’t need millimeter-level accuracy, just measurements within a fraction of an inch, and you need them for every unit, not just one room.
You only need higher accuracy if your model is used for structural coordination, detailed MEP routing, or fabrication. In most apartment buildings, this applies to plant rooms, risers, and podiums, not the individual units. By handling those areas separately, you avoid spending a lot on high-end scanners for every bedroom.
Which constraints matter more in apartments than anywhere else?
The number of units affects your cost per scan more than the cost of the device itself. A scanner that makes sense for a big commercial space might not be practical for scanning ninety small apartments.
Small, awkward spaces make using tripods difficult. Bathrooms, narrow kitchens, hallways, and closets all need several setups with a traditional scanner, and each setup means more time spent in a cramped room with your gear.
If tenants are living in the units, your approach has to change. You need to keep visits short and bring as little equipment as possible. For more on this, see How to Capture As-Builts in Occupied Buildings Without Disrupting Tenants.
Being able to repeat the process easily is more important here than in one-time projects. Apartment buildings often need rescanning after tenants move out or after renovations. It’s better to have a workflow that anyone on your team can handle, instead of one that needs a specialist and special equipment.
Phone and Tablet LiDAR
For most apartment as-built jobs, using a phone or tablet is the quickest and cheapest choice.
Phone and tablet LiDAR scans are accurate to within half an inch for typical interiors, which is more than enough for floor plans. Scanning a unit takes just a few minutes, not hours. You don’t have to worry about booking, charging, carrying, or insuring extra equipment, and someone else can scan another part of the building at the same time.
The results from these scans are ready for all your as-built needs. One scan gives you a 3D mesh, a virtual walkthrough, a 3D floor plan, and a labeled 2D plan. You can export to PDF, DXF, PNG, SVG, and CSV with Business and Enterprise plans. The DXF files are layered, so walls, openings, and labels show up in AutoCAD or Revit as editable objects, not just flat images.
There are limits to this approach. It’s not survey-grade, so if you need certified accuracy, you’ll still need a terrestrial scanner. Usually, only certain rooms in a residential building need that level of precision, which is why both methods can work together on the same project.
Leica BLK360
The BLK360 is the terrestrial scanner you’ll see most often on residential projects, and it’s now much more practical for indoor use than earlier models.
Leica publishes a full scan with spherical images in twenty seconds, with four scan settings capturing at 7, 13, 30 or 75 seconds, all at 680,000 points per second. The unit measures 155 by 80mm and weighs 850g with batteries, which matters when you are carrying it up stairwells. Their Visual Inertial System combines each scan with the previous one in the field, which removes much of the registration work that used to follow a scanning day.
Every room needs at least one tripod setup, and small rooms may need several. What takes minutes with a phone can take much longer with this device. As of July 2026, Leica prices the BLK360 starting at $26,500 | $592/mo.
Use this scanner for plant rooms, risers, structural surveys, and any unit where you’re opening up walls for renovation. Don’t use it for scanning a hundred bedrooms.
Matterport
Matterport works well for residential portfolios where having a virtual tour is important. In multifamily buildings, this often means it’s used for leasing and marketing as well as documentation.
One constraint decides whether it fits your as-built workflow. According to Matterport’s own price list, any model containing scans made with a smartphone or a spherical camera loses the option to purchase the E57, BIM, or CAD file exports. So if your as-builts end in AutoCAD or Revit, you are pushed onto Pro camera hardware, which means a tripod repositioned through each unit and a camera to buy or hire.
Matterport’s pricing is more complicated than most. You pay for a plan, hosting for each space, and extra add-ons for floor plans and file exports. For big portfolios, make sure to count your active spaces before comparing monthly costs, since that’s how the plan tiers are set.
Handheld Walking Scanners
What is a SLAM scanner?
Scanners like the Leica BLK2GO and NavVis VLX let you capture data as you walk, instead of stopping at fixed tripod spots. They use SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping), which means the device tracks its own position while mapping the space. Leica’s system combines laser data, cameras, and motion sensors to follow its path through a building, so it can scan over and under objects, through doorways, around corners, and up stairs without stopping. The BLK2GO weighs 775 grams with its battery and captures 420,000 points per second.
The main advantage is speed, especially for large buildings with long corridors and similar unit layouts. Walking scanners cover more ground faster than tripod setups or careful phone scans. The downsides are cost and the type of output. Prices aren’t listed, so you’ll need dealer quotes, and these scanners are much more expensive than phones. They also create point clouds, not finished floor plans, so you’ll still need someone to do the drafting.
These scanners are a good fit if you scan buildings regularly as a service. If you’re a property manager just documenting your own buildings, they usually aren’t worth the cost.
CubiCasa
CubiCasa works differently from other scanners. You use their app to scan, upload the data, and then get a finished floor plan sent back to you.
Their published workflow is a scan of around five minutes per property, with delivery in 24 hours or six with a rush add-on. The 2D plan is free with 3D as a paid add-on, the first scan is free, and the app runs on both iOS and Android. Their CAD package delivers DWG alongside mesh formats.
The big advantage for large residential projects is that your team doesn’t have to do any drafting. The downside is you have to wait for the finished plan to be delivered, so if something is missing, you won’t know until the next day, instead of catching it while you’re still in the unit.
Choosing by Situation
Which scanner should I use for my portfolio?
If you need to scan lots of occupied units, use a phone. It’s the only option that lets you finish quickly, avoid bringing extra equipment into someone’s home, and still get a floor plan at the end.
If you’re scanning empty units before a renovation, a phone is still usually the best choice—unless the renovation is structural. Empty rooms are quicker and easier to scan, and the accuracy requirements stay the same.
If your model will be used for structural or MEP coordination, use a terrestrial scanner for those areas and a phone for everything else. Deciding on this split early is the most important cost decision for a residential documentation project.
If you need a virtual tour for leasing during the same visit, consider Matterport. Just make sure its export options fit your as-built workflow.
If your team can’t do drafting in-house, a service like CubiCasa solves that problem, but you won’t be able to make changes on the same day.
No hardware to buy.
FAQ
What scanners are recommended for apartment as-builts?
For most units, an iPhone or iPad with LiDAR, which captures to within half an inch on standard interiors and produces measured floor plans in minutes. Terrestrial scanners like the Leica BLK360 are the right call for plant rooms, risers and any area feeding structural coordination.
Is a phone accurate enough for apartment as-built drawings?
For floor plans, room dimensions, wall positions and area calculations, yes. Standard interior LiDAR captures are accurate to within half an inch. For certified tolerances or fabrication-level work, use a terrestrial scanner for those specific elements.
How long does it take to scan an apartment?
Minutes per unit with phone capture, walking room by room. A terrestrial scanner takes considerably longer, since small rooms need at least one tripod position each and often more. On an occupied building, that difference decides whether the visit fits a tenant’s lunch break.
Do I need a laser scanner for as-built documentation?
Not for most residential documentation. Laser scanners earn their cost where tolerance is tight or where the point cloud density matters, which in an apartment building is usually a handful of specific areas rather than the units themselves.
What is the cheapest way to scan apartments for as-builts?
A phone you already own plus a subscription, with no hardware purchase and no per-unit fee. Compare that against per-plan services and against hardware amortized over your actual unit count, since the answer changes sharply with volume.
Can I scan a furnished apartment?
Yes. Floor plan generation detects walls, doors, and windows behind furniture, and detected items can be adjusted or removed afterward in the editor. Tenants do not need to move belongings.
What file formats do I need for as-builts?
A layered DXF for AutoCAD and Revit linework, LAS if the point cloud is going through Autodesk ReCap into a BIM model, and PDF for the deliverable that goes to a client or a file. CSV is useful when room-by-room areas need to land in a spreadsheet.
