iMazing vs AnyTrans: the question is what each one does with an encrypted backup
iMazing and AnyTrans are both phone managers, their yearly prices sit ten dollars apart, and they do the same job on paper. One difference decides most cases: iMazing opens an encrypted iPhone backup, and AnyTrans tells you to turn the encryption off first. If your backup is protected, that is the whole comparison.
What does each one do with an encrypted backup?
AnyTrans asks you to remove the protection. Its own guide says so:
Apple will not let the third-party software detect the encrypted backup for protecting users’ privacy, so please kindly uncheck encrypted backup first
Of the products surveyed in this category on 4 August 2026, it was the only one that cannot read a protected backup, and the only one that advises the user to switch the protection off.
iMazing reads it. So do Decipher TextMessage, TouchCopy and this program. Nothing in that list is doing anything clever: Apple lets software ask for the password and open the backup with it, which is exactly what the others do.
The reason this matters more than a missing checkbox is what encryption is protecting. An unencrypted iPhone backup on a Windows PC is a readable copy of your messages, and switching encryption off to satisfy an exporter leaves it that way afterwards, on a machine that may be shared, synced or backed up somewhere else. For anyone assembling material about a dispute, that is a strange trade to be talked into by a tool. What encryption covers, and what an unencrypted backup exposes, is set out in how to read an encrypted iPhone backup on Windows.
There is a second cost that is easy to miss. Turning encryption off does not decrypt the backup you already have; it changes what the next backup will be. So the instruction is really “make a fresh unprotected backup”, and that backup loses the Health data, saved passwords and call history that only an encrypted one carries.
How do the two licences compare?
This is where they diverge in the other direction, and AnyTrans is the better deal of the two.
| iMazing | AnyTrans | |
|---|---|---|
| Price, checked 4 Aug 2026 | 49.99 USD/year, five devices | 39.99 USD/year, or 59.99 lifetime |
| Perpetual option | no, discontinued June 2025 | yes |
| Encrypted backups | yes | no, guide says uncheck it |
| Where messages come from | an iTunes or iMazing backup | a backup |
| Free version | 25 messages, and 25 WhatsApp messages | 30 items per data type, first three days |
| Runs on | Windows, macOS | Windows, macOS |
iMazing’s row is the vendor’s own sentence, and it is why advice written before mid 2025 no longer applies:
In June 2025, we discontinued the device license and now only offer subscriptions
Over three years, that is roughly 150 USD for iMazing against 59.99 for an AnyTrans lifetime licence, on the prices published when this was checked. If price alone decided it, AnyTrans wins the pair outright.
The free tiers are worth reading together, because they fail in opposite ways. iMazing’s stops at a quantity, so you can see the shape of the output but never a whole conversation. AnyTrans’s stops at three days, so the clock is running from the moment you install it, on a task most people are doing while something stressful is already happening.
Where does this program stand next to them?
Same source of data as iMazing, the licence model of AnyTrans at its best, and a much narrower job than either.
ChatExport reads an Apple backup, finds the message database and turns one conversation into a document. It does not manage a phone, restore anything or move a photo library, and both programs above do all of that better because they are built for it.
What the narrow scope pays for:
- Encrypted backups read directly, with the password asked for at the backup and never written to disk. No instruction anywhere in it to weaken your own backup.
- Court View, a formal export layout with message numbering down the margin, timestamps to the second and raw phone numbers beside contact names.
- A SHA256 checksum written beside the finished file, so the document can be re-checked later by anyone: see how to verify a PDF with SHA256 in 30 seconds.
- Five formats: PDF in two styles, TXT, HTML, CSV and RSMF.
- One payment of 34.99 USD, and no subscription, ever.
The trial is free, watermarks every page and stops after the 50 most recent messages, with the whole thread readable on screen before you pay. That is twice iMazing’s twenty five, and it has no three day clock on it.
Which of the three should you choose?
Choose AnyTrans if you want a full phone manager, you want to pay once, and your backup is not encrypted or you genuinely do not mind making an unencrypted one. The lifetime licence at 59.99 USD is the cheapest permanent thing in this comparison.
Choose iMazing if you want the most capable phone manager of the three and the yearly cost is acceptable, or if you are on a Mac. It handles devices, apps, photo libraries, voicemail and fleets, and it reads a protected backup without asking you to unprotect it.
Choose this one if you are on Windows, the job is one conversation rather than a phone, and the export has to hold up to questions later. It is also the answer if your backup is encrypted and you would rather not change that to satisfy a program.
What this comparison does not decide
Whether any export is accepted anywhere. Courts, tribunals and employers decide that on their own rules. What a document carries is a fair thing to compare; what a reader of it will conclude is not.
What AnyTrans can do beyond its own guide. The sourced claim here is that its guide instructs the user to uncheck encrypted backup, and that it was the only product in this survey unable to read one. Its Restore module was not tested against a protected backup for this page.
Today’s prices. Every figure above carries its check date of 4 August 2026. Both vendors change prices, and one of them changed its entire licence model in the middle of last year.
Which is faster. No timing was measured for either program, so no claim about speed appears on this page.
Frequently asked questions
Can AnyTrans read an encrypted iPhone backup at all?
Its own guide asks you to uncheck encrypted backup first, which is why this page treats it as the one program in the category that does not read a protected backup. Every other program compared here opens one with the password.
Is turning off backup encryption a real risk or a technicality?
It is a real change, and it lasts. An unencrypted backup is a readable copy of your messages sitting in a folder on your PC, and the setting stays off for every backup after it until someone turns it back on. It also drops the Health data, saved passwords and call history that only encrypted backups carry.
Does iMazing still sell a licence you keep?
No. Checked on 4 August 2026 the store had Personal at 49.99 USD a year, Family at 89.99 and Business from 275, with no perpetual option, and the vendor’s licensing page states the device licence was discontinued in June 2025. What that changed for a tool most people use once is covered in the iMazing alternative for Windows.
Do all three read the same messages?
Broadly yes, when the backup is one they can open. All three take messaging data out of an Apple backup rather than out of the phone, so none of them is reaching something the others cannot. The differences are in the document at the end and in how you pay.
What about WhatsApp?
All three handle it. iMazing and AnyTrans read it from the phone backup. This program reads WhatsApp’s own export file instead, which also works from an Android handset, because the file is written by WhatsApp rather than by the phone.
The eleven programs in this category side by side, with the column that decides most of them, are in the best iPhone message export software of 2026. The encrypted backup question on its own, including what the password protects and why a program should never ask you to give it up, is in an AnyTrans alternative that asks for your backup password instead.
Before paying anyone, look at what a finished document is supposed to be. The sample exports are this program’s real output over an invented custody dispute.