You are self-employed, run an SME, or are a sales manager staffing the stand with a colleague. The show has cost you the space, the stand, transport and two or three days of work. One question remains: how many of these conversations will turn into customers?
The big lead capture tools are designed for marketing teams of thirty people. This page is for those who have neither the budget nor the time to roll them out.
What the usual solutions cost
- The organiser's scanner: at shows that offer one, it is rented per show, and leads may be deleted after a few weeks. At Messe Düsseldorf, for glasstec 2026, it costs €149 excl. VAT per show for the app on your own phone. See Alternative to the organiser's badge scanner for what badge scanning costs at other shows.
- Professional apps: often "on quotation", sometimes with an annual commitment or a price per show. speedlead, for example, lists €500 excl. VAT for a trial show and €1,250 excl. VAT per show.
- The notebook and the pile of cards: free, but this is where leads get lost, for lack of sorting and notes.
What a small exhibitor really needs
- Fast capture: a photographed business card, a scanned badge QR code, or an entry in a few seconds.
- On-the-spot qualification: hot, warm or cold, and a note on the promised next step.
- Working without a network: exhibition halls are known for their saturated Wi-Fi.
- A clean file out: to follow up from your email or import into your CRM.
- Paying nothing in months without a show.
How Scanlead meets these needs
The free plan is enough for a small show: 50 captures per month, cards, badges and manual entries included, no credit card. CSV and Excel export is included.
Pro, at €19 excl. VAT per month, for busy shows: unlimited captures, one user, and the API to feed your own tool. No commitment: you can switch to Pro for the month of the show, then go back to the free plan.
Nothing to install: Scanlead runs in the phone's browser. An Android app is also available.
Offline: open Scanlead while you still have a network. If the connection drops afterwards, badge QR codes and manual entry keep working: the contact stays on the phone and syncs once the connection is back. Reading a business card needs a connection.
An example calculation
An exhibitor who does three shows a year and captures 120 contacts at the biggest one:
- with the free plan alone, they are limited to 50 captures in the month of that show;
- by switching to Pro only for the three show months, they pay 3 × €19 excl. VAT, i.e. €57 excl. VAT per year;
- with a tool billed per show at €1,250 excl. VAT, the same year costs €3,750 excl. VAT.
The calculation changes if you need what Scanlead does not do: reading badges that only contain a number from the organiser's database, sending directly to Salesforce, or running a detailed questionnaire. The organiser's scanner, which does these things, is compared with Scanlead in Alternative to the organiser's badge scanner.
After the show
Capture is only half the job. To get your contacts into your CRM and follow them up: Trade show leads to your CRM.