Once you know which iPhones have LiDAR, see the best room scanning apps for contractors and our photo to estimate apps ranking.

Which iPhones have LiDAR? The short answer

If you are asking which iPhones have LiDAR, the rule is simple: LiDAR is a Pro-only feature. Every Pro and Pro Max iPhone from the iPhone 12 Pro forward carries a LiDAR Scanner, and no standard, Plus, mini, or SE model has ever shipped with one. As of 2026, that gives you six generations of LiDAR-equipped iPhones, from the iPhone 12 Pro released in October 2020 through the iPhone 17 Pro released in September 2025. The iPad side started even earlier: the iPad Pro that shipped in March 2020 was the first Apple device with a LiDAR Scanner, and every iPad Pro since has included one.

This matters for contractors because the LiDAR Scanner is what powers fast, walk-through room scanning. With the sensor, a measurement or estimating app can capture wall lengths, ceiling heights, and door and window openings in a single pass through a room. Without it, the same apps fall back to slower photo-only capture. So the practical question behind “which iPhones have LiDAR” is usually “can the phone in my pocket scan a room,” and the answer comes down entirely to whether it is a Pro model.

Full list of iPhones with LiDAR

Here is every iPhone with a LiDAR Scanner, from newest to oldest. Each pairing (the Pro and the Pro Max of a given generation) shares the same sensor, so they are listed together. This is the complete answer to which iPhones have LiDAR through the 2026 lineup.

• iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max (2025). The current Pro generation. LiDAR Scanner listed in Apple’s sensor specifications.
• iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max (2024). LiDAR Scanner confirmed in Apple tech specs, used for night-mode portraits and depth capture.
• iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max (2023). LiDAR Scanner included. First Pro line with USB-C, which speeds up large scan exports.
• iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max (2022). LiDAR Scanner listed under both the camera system and sensors. A widely deployed jobsite workhorse.
• iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max (2021). LiDAR Scanner carried over from the 12 Pro line with improved thermals.
• iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max (2020). The first iPhone with LiDAR. Apple introduced the sensor on the Pro line in October 2020.

That is the entire list. There is no non-Pro iPhone on it, and there has never been one. When Apple introduced LiDAR on the iPhone 12 Pro, the company stated that the LiDAR Scanner “comes to the Pro line,” and that positioning has held through every generation since.

iPhone LiDAR device table

The table below shows which iPhones have LiDAR alongside the base models that do not, so you can see the Pro versus non-Pro split at a glance. The non-Pro rows are included on purpose, because the most common mistake is assuming a standard iPhone has the sensor when it does not.

The pattern is consistent down the entire list. Read the model name, look for the word “Pro,” and you have your answer. If a phone is a Pro or Pro Max from the iPhone 12 generation onward, it has LiDAR. If it is anything else, it does not.

Which iPads have LiDAR?

The iPad story matters because the iPad Pro was actually the first Apple device with a LiDAR Scanner, beating the iPhone 12 Pro to market by about seven months. Apple introduced LiDAR on the iPad Pro in March 2020. From that point forward, every iPad Pro has carried the sensor, while the standard iPad, iPad Air, and iPad mini lines have not.

• iPad Pro 11-inch (2nd generation) and 12.9-inch (4th generation), released March 2020. The first Apple devices with a LiDAR Scanner.
• Every later iPad Pro, including the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th generation 12.9-inch models, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th generation 11-inch models, and the current M-series iPad Pro tablets. All carry a LiDAR Scanner.
• Standard iPad, iPad Air, and iPad mini. None of these lines include LiDAR, regardless of how recent the model is.

For a contractor, the larger iPad Pro screen can be useful for reviewing a scan on site, but the iPhone Pro is the device most crews actually carry into the field. The sensor and the scanning capability are the same on both, so the choice comes down to which screen you want in your hand while you walk a room.

iPhones that do not have LiDAR

It is worth being explicit about the iPhones that do not have LiDAR, because the gap trips people up constantly. None of the following have the sensor: the standard iPhone 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17; every Plus model (14 Plus, 15 Plus, 16 Plus, 17 Plus); the mini models (12 mini, 13 mini); and every iPhone SE generation. There is no software update, accessory, or setting that adds LiDAR to a phone that did not ship with the hardware.

If you load a room-scanning or measurement app on a non-Pro iPhone, the app will usually still open, but it will quietly switch to photo-only capture. Photo capture has its own uses, but it does not give you the live depth feed that makes a LiDAR scan fast and dimensionally useful. So before you rely on an iPhone to scan a job, confirm it is a Pro model. The difference between a Pro and a non-Pro of the same generation is the difference between a phone that can scan a room and one that cannot.

How to check whether your iPhone has LiDAR

There are two reliable ways to confirm whether the phone in your hand has a LiDAR Scanner. Both take under a minute.

1. Check the model name in Settings

   Open Settings, tap General, then tap About. Read the line labeled Model Name. If it ends in “Pro” or “Pro Max” and the generation is iPhone 12 or newer, the device has LiDAR. If the name is a standard, Plus, mini, or SE model, it does not.

2. Look at the back camera array

   Turn the phone over and look at the rear camera cluster. Pro models have three camera lenses arranged in a triangle, plus a small separate black circle near the flash. That small circle is the LiDAR Scanner. Non-Pro models have either two lenses or a different layout and no separate LiDAR aperture.

3. Confirm against Apple’s tech specs

   If you want certainty, look up the model on Apple’s official tech specs pages. LiDAR-equipped models list “LiDAR Scanner” under the camera and sensors sections. If the spec sheet does not mention it, the device does not have one, and no app can add it.

What LiDAR actually does for contractors

Knowing which iPhones have LiDAR is only useful if you know what the sensor buys you on a jobsite. LiDAR is a depth sensor that emits infrared light and measures how long it takes to bounce back, building a real-time depth map of whatever you point the phone at. Software stitches that depth map together with the camera feed to produce a 3D model of a room, complete with measured wall lengths, ceiling heights, and door and window openings.

For a contractor, estimator, or remodeler, the payoff is speed. A walk-through scan of a room takes a few minutes and captures the geometry you would otherwise gather with a laser distance meter, a tape, and a sketch pad. The sensor works in any lighting indoors, including total darkness, because it does not depend on visible light. That makes it a strong fit for the kind of interior measurement most remodel and trade work requires.

Where it shines

• Room dimensions and floor area, accurate enough to drive material takeoffs for paint, flooring, and drywall.
• Ceiling heights, captured in seconds instead of aiming a laser meter at point after point.
• Door and window openings, identified automatically by the scanning frameworks Apple provides.
• Before-and-after documentation, where a 3D capture is an unambiguous record of an existing condition.

Where it falls short

• Fine detail like trim profiles, crown moulding, and outlet boxes falls below the sensor’s resolution.
• Reflective surfaces such as mirrors, glass, and polished concrete confuse the depth signal.
• Outdoor scans in direct sunlight wash out the infrared signal. Overcast, shade, dawn, or dusk work far better.
• Permit-grade and structural work needs tighter tolerance than a handheld phone delivers. Use a tripod-mounted scanner for that.

The honest framing is that a LiDAR-equipped iPhone is a fast, sketch-grade capture tool for residential and small-commercial interiors. It is not a replacement for a survey crew, and it is not meant to be. Within its envelope, though, it routinely saves an estimator hours per site visit.

Pairing LiDAR with photo-to-estimate workflows

The room scan is the first half of the job. The second half is turning that geometry into a number you can put in front of a client. This is where a LiDAR-equipped iPhone becomes more than a measuring tool. When you pair the scan with a photo-to-estimate workflow, the captured dimensions flow straight into a material list and a labor breakdown, without the manual takeoff step that usually eats an hour after every site visit.

SimplyWise Cost Estimator is built for exactly this. You walk a room with a Pro iPhone, capture the geometry, snap a few photos of the space, and the photo-to-estimate engine turns the scan and the images into a sourced material list with quantities. Paint square footage, flooring, drywall sheet count, and baseboard linear feet all fall out of the captured numbers. For a contractor running several site visits a week, that turns a 30-to-60-minute manual takeoff into a few seconds of processing.

The only hardware requirement is a Pro iPhone, which most contractors already carry. If your phone is on the list above, you have everything you need to start scanning and estimating today.