Halal Food Scanner is a free iPhone and Android app that answers one question in the aisle: is this food halal? Point the camera at a barcode or an ingredient list and get a clear answer — Halal, Haram, or honestly Uncertain.
What this is
Two surfaces, one table. The app is for the supermarket. This website publishes the same reference table ingredient by ingredient — the reasoning, the citation, and, where recognised authorities disagree, the dissent printed next to our verdict rather than hidden.
There is no login, no onboarding, and no splash screen. The camera opens on launch. The ingredient database lives on your phone, so it works where the signal doesn't.
What this is not
We are not a certification body and we do not issue religious rulings. We compile what published references say, show our working, and cite the sources so you can check us. Schools of thought differ on several ingredients in this library — where they do, we say so.
If your local mosque, madhhab, or certifier takes a different view, that view should override ours. We are trying to make the question legible, not to close it.
How a verdict is reached
Reading a label and ruling on an ingredient are deliberately separate jobs. OCR and normalisation map whatever is printed onto a canonical entry. The verdict is then a straight lookup — not a model deciding whether pork gelatin is permissible.
The full account — source tiers, what we do when authorities disagree, and why “uncertain” is a feature — is on the methodology page. The public library starts at ingredients.
Privacy
No accounts. Scan activity is tied to an anonymous on-device install ID. We do not log the barcode or ingredient text in that activity log. Details are in the privacy policy.
Contact
Found a mistake, or have a question about a ruling? Email help.halalfoodscanner@gmail.com. For a wrong scan in the app, use Report a mistake — a photo helps us fix the underlying data.