2026 Comparison: 8 Intraoral Scanners Examined From the Laboratory's Side

A laboratory working with five client practices can receive impressions from five different scanner brands, each with its own cloud. This comparison of intraoral scanners for the laboratory looks at neither accuracy nor scanning speed. It compares eight solutions on what counts for your production: the export format and how easily it fits your CAD software.

The trend will not reverse. According to Mordor Intelligence, the intraoral scanner market is growing at around 11% a year over 2026-2031. More brands in circulation means more portals to watch, whatever the number of cases handled each day.

The laboratory does not choose its scanner, but it lives with eight clouds

The choice of scanner is not yours. The dental practice buys its brand, according to its own budget and habits. You, as the laboratory, receive whatever arrives: 3Shape, Medit, iTero, Dentsply Sirona, Shining3D, Dexis, Panda or 3DISC, depending on the client.

An active laboratory handles dozens of cases a day, spread across several manufacturer clouds. Each brand imposes its credentials, its interface and its own access rules. The number of brands keeps growing, which complicates the logistics whatever the volume of cases received.

Understanding what each cloud actually allows therefore becomes a production matter, not a technical detail. That is what this comparison is for.

The cost of that juggling stays concrete, even without a figure on it. A forgotten credential blocks a case in the queue. A cloud that will not open from a different workstation delays a case being taken on. Every extra brand adds a habit to remember rather than a button to click.

The comparison table for the 8 intraoral scanners

The table below compares the eight scanners on the criteria that touch your daily work: the vendor, the associated cloud and the type of export offered. No invented clinical data, only what the vendors document themselves.

This table does not rank the scanners from best to worst. It simply shows what each cloud lets you retrieve, once the impression has arrived.

Two families emerge. On one side, the clouds that export the STL file with no particular condition: Medit, Shining3D, Dexis, Panda and 3DISC. On the other, the portals that lock retrieval behind a license specific to the brand, such as 3Shape Communicate. DS Core and MyiTero sit between the two, with easier access that still belongs to their own ecosystem.

Reading by family serves a practical purpose. As soon as a new client practice announces its scanner brand, it lets you anticipate what follows. You know whether its reception will slot into your organization directly, or whether it will call for an extra preparation step. A production manager who knows these families saves time when taking on a new client, rather than discovering it case by case.

Open cloud, closed cloud: two philosophies of export

The manufacturer clouds are not equivalent. Medit Link is an open cloud on export, with STL files coming out freely, with no particular lock for the laboratory retrieving them.

3Shape Communicate follows another logic. It does carry cases, but working with them requires a 3Shape Dental System or Unite license and the STL export option enabled on the dongle. Without it, the laboratory can view the impression without being able to retrieve it.

That difference changes your work in concrete terms. With an open cloud, the file arrives ready to open in Exocad. With a closed cloud, each case involves an extra step, or a dedicated subscription for the sole purpose of retrieving the files.

The consequence goes beyond reception. A locked file also delays design, since the technician waits for access before modeling the crown or the bridge. An open file, by contrast, enters the production flow directly with no waiting step.

DS Core and MyiTero: the portals of the large dental groups

The large dental groups have each built their own portal. Dentsply Sirona offers DS Core, a cloud platform designed to connect its scanners to partner laboratories.

Align Technology works differently with MyiTero, a free portal with unlimited storage. Scans arrive there directly, with reception into Exocad possible without a manual export.

Both portals nonetheless remain silos belonging to their own brand. A laboratory receiving iTero cases and Dentsply Sirona cases keeps two accounts, two passwords and two ways of working.

Take a multi-site laboratory serving ten practices on different brands. It does not log in ten times to gather its morning cases, but its organization depends on the number of portals actually open. Every time a client practice changes scanner, that number moves. And the laboratory never has a say in the original choice.

The same holds for the sole technician. They receive fewer cases in total, but often from a range of practices just as wide, relative to their size. The number of clouds to know does not depend on the size of the laboratory, only on the number of brands present among its clients.

Shining3D, Dexis, Panda, 3DISC: open formats, separate portals

Four brands less visible in France follow a logic close to Medit's: documented export, with no extra license needed to retrieve the file.

Shining3D Aoralscan: an open system on export, with STL, OBJ and PLY files. Direct export into Exocad, and a cloud platform for transmission between practice and laboratory.

Dexis: scans transfer through the Quick Connect network. The export format covers STL, PLY, OBJ, and the formats specific to DWOS and Exocad, with no proprietary restriction announced by the vendor.

Panda, the brand from manufacturer Freqty: the software offers export of the scanned file in STL, PLY or OBJ. The choice of format is left to the user at the moment of export.

3DISC: the 3DiscCloud platform exports in STL, OBJ and PLY, with direct integration announced into DWOS and into Exocad.

For your laboratory, what these four have in common matters more than the differences between brands. All of them document a usable STL export, which simplifies integration on the production side.

These brands carry less weight in France today than 3Shape or Medit. But a laboratory receiving even a single case from each has to know their export rules. Ignoring that detail means risking asking for an impression that has already been sent, for want of knowing where to retrieve it.

The export format: what really counts for your CAD

The export format weighs more on your daily work than the brand itself. A clean STL file, opening directly in Exocad, needs no conversion and no re-keying.

A locked export, by contrast, forces you through a dedicated license or an extra conversion step. Multiplied by dozens of cases a day, that friction becomes a real production cost rather than a mere annoyance.

The right reflex is to look at the format each vendor announces before receiving the first case. It is that format, more than the scanner brand, that sets your processing speed day to day.

The open file then travels the whole production chain. Dental CAD/CAM uses CAD to design, then CAM to manufacture, from the same digital file. An export locked at reception weakens that continuity before design has even begun.

Absorbing the range of scanners without losing a full-time position

Receiving eight families of scanners does not mean managing eight ways of working. Connectors already exist that feed cases from several manufacturer clouds into the laboratory's management system. The technician then no longer has to log in to each cloud separately.

DigiLab announces a universal inbox compatible with nine scanners on the market, brought together in a single reception interface. The vendor also claims a gain of one full-time equivalent per month for laboratories that centralize reception this way.

The principle stays the same whatever solution is chosen. The production manager consults a single queue, already sorted by practice and by status. They redirect the time once spent hunting for files toward design and manufacturing themselves.

The idea stays simple. One entry point for eight brands, rather than eight portals each watched on its own.

FAQ

Does a laboratory have to create an account on the cloud of every scanner brand it receives?

Yes, in every case. The laboratory's account has to exist with the brand for the practice to be able to select you when sending its case, and each manufacturer cloud works with its own credentials. A centralization solution does not remove those accounts, it removes what comes after: the daily login to each portal to see what has arrived. The account is created once, the checking repeats every day.

How do you tell an open-export scanner from a locked-export one?

The criterion is in the vendor's documentation, not on the scanner's clinical spec sheet. An open export means the STL file comes out freely, with no extra license. A locked export usually requires a subscription or a dedicated cloud to retrieve a file you can actually work with.

Does the export format change how you work in Exocad?

Less than its content does. An STL or a PLY opens in any design software, but it carries only the impressions: in Exocad, you still have to create the case, enter the patient reference, choose the dentist, fill in the work sheet and import the files one by one. An export in .dentalProject, Exocad's own format, arrives with the case already assembled. DigiLab generates it alongside the STL, and the case opens without having to be rebuilt.

How can a laboratory centralize reception from several different scanners?

The method is to connect the various manufacturer clouds to a single entry point, rather than checking them one by one. Connectors and universal inboxes already exist for this kind of use. The choice depends on the number of brands received and the volume of cases handled each day.

Conclusion

This comparison does not say which scanner to buy: that choice belongs to your client practices. What it gives you is a clear reading grid for your production, scanner by scanner. The export format and the openness of the cloud weigh more on your daily work than any clinical specification.

Eight brands, eight clouds, but one stake for the laboratory: receiving a usable file without losing time at every step. The more brands multiply among your clients, the more central that stake becomes to your organization.

Want to receive these eight families of scanners in one inbox? Try DigiLab free with 100 cases over 14 days, no commitment. The detail of the features and pricing sets out the connectors available for your CAD software.

The Digilab team