Free PDF Editors vs Paid Versions
Acrobat has been around for a long time. It is now over 30 years old. It has been the gold standard for digital documents since its release. Competitors have managed to duplicate its functions, and some paid alternatives do improve upon the use of memory and are faster.
I have used Acrobat Pro in a business environment. I can attest to the impressive set of tools it has. It also comes with a steep learning curve to use all of them. Some competitors have overcome those limitations while remaining in the same price range. My question to you is, “How many of us truly need a professional PDF editor?” The surprising aspect of PDF editing software is its cost versus free alternatives.
People who use PDF editors aim to:
- Annotate: Highlight text, draw, and add additional comments
- Fill Forms – complete interactive PDF forms
- Add Text – Adds the ability to insert text and text boxes anywhere
- Save Changes – Save the edits you made
- Merge and Split – Combine multiple PDFs
- Secure PDF – Encrypt or decrypt files, add watermarks, and digital signatures
- Data Extraction – Extract images and text from PDFs
- Optimize – Compress file sizes and adjust formatting for better usability
Microsoft Edge can do items 1- 5, as well as the ability to use Copilot to generate concise summaries of its content. Only if you wanted to do more would you need a dedicated PDF editor.
Sponsored Lists
It is difficult to find a “Best Free Acrobat Alternatives” that is not sponsored. This indicates that the products listed have paid for their inclusion or promotion. Sellers might pay extra to feature their product at the top of the list. Most publishers show it as sponsored as a form of transparency, but not all do.
100% Unsponsored And Unbiased
The criteria for inclusion on the Free list:
- The product must be free, period
- Users must be able to either download a functioning app or upload it to an online-only application
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with charging for your product; it is why we go into business. However, I find it hard to justify hundreds of dollars for any program that has competitors offering similar functions for free.
I have downloaded and tried each of these products using Windows Sandbox. When looking for anything “Free” on the internet, I highly recommend you do the same. Several sites redirected me to another site, and for the most part, I have not listed them.
Free PDF Alternatives
PDF Candy: Make sure you only click on https://pdfcandy.com. A robust alternative to Acrobat. The front interface looks remarkably familiar to Acrobat. It has a menu that allows you to Edit, Annotate, Manage Pages, and Convert To. It is easy to move, delete, or add pages, highlight text, add or delete images, it also has the ability to change text color, insert or draw items in any color. Included are OCR (Optical Character Recognition capabilities.
PDFgear: A fully functioning document editor, with a wide array of tools. (see image below) Also available in the MS store. One of the most complete PDF editors has everything most of us would need when dealing with electronic documents. It has all the same functions as PDF Candy. https://www.pdfgear.com
Liquid Text – exclusively from the MS store. Clumsy and constant requests to upgrade.
PDF X – exclusively from the MS store. The free version offers Editing text, but is not as powerful as the first two.
Sumatra – A free open-source viewer only – https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/
Free In-Browser Editors
The functionality is similar to a downloaded program and may be preferable if you do not wish to have another program on your PC. However, some leave watermarks indicating they are made from a “Free Trial” program.
PDFfiller – The document can only be saved after creating an account – https://www.pdffiller.com/
Most of the other “In-Browser” editors are close enough in function to PDFfiller, they are:
- PDFescape Opens PDFfiller
- PDF-Xchange Editor Opens PDFfiller
- Sejda –A nice editor, but has limitations like a Max of 200 pages or 50MB and only 3 tasks per hour – Easy to use Online PDF editor
- DocHub – https://www.dochub.com/
- PDFAid – Some functions may leave a watermark https://pdfaid.com/
- MergePDF – https://www.mergedpdf.com/
Free To Download
The last group is free to download but not free; most offer a limited free trial. None of the free trial products offers more than the free versions listed above.
- PDF Suite – https://www.pdf-format.com/
- PDF-Format – redirected to PDFSuite
- Nitro PDF – https://www.NitroPro.com
- MobiSystems – https://mobisystems.com/
- Foxit – https://www.foxit.com
- React PDF Viewer – https://react-pdf-viewer.dev/
- SodaPDF – https://www.sodapdf.com/
Summary
I believe the free editors listed above will suffice for personal use. Even if you own a small business, you shouldn’t go wrong. I understand that you may have a personal preference, which is not listed here, but this list is just for informational use by our readers who might be looking for a program like this.
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