The expression, scanning microscopy has been used for scanning electron microscope techniques over 20 years. With the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope, a development leading to the construction of a range of scanning (probe) microscopes started. In this growing group the most popular of these is the atomic force microscope which became competitive to the SEM method during the last decade. The different features, advantages and drawbacks of these two popular scanning techniques are analysed in the paper.