There are hundreds of PDF Editors on the market. We took a look at not less than six ‘Best PDF Editor’ articles online to find the best of the best. But do you need a PDF Editor at all?

With so many PDF Editors on the market, it’s difficult to know where to start, do you go for the tried and tested, or branch out into something new, spending your time and energy diving into the unknown.

For most of us, you might only be using a PDF Editor to read PDF documents, not to edit them at all. If so, do you need a PDF Editor at all?

If you run an internet search for ‘best PDF Editors’ you are assailed with thousands of articles and links which would take you years to get through. We’ve done some of the work for you and taken a look at five ‘best PDF Editors’ to see what comes out on top.

Sources of ‘Best PDF Editor’ articles

Some years ago we decided to compile a list of PDF Editors and Readers, in the end we gave up at around 50 as there seemed to be a never-ending number of offers in this evidently over-saturated market.

Knowing this, we decided to take a look at the first six ‘best of’ articles that came up in an internet search. Those six articles were on the following domains:

• TechRadar
• Forbes
• PCWorld
• Tom’s Guide
• Digital Trends
• Creative Bloq

We were very familiar with the first three, had heard of Digital Trends, but hadn’t come across Creative Bloq before. With this in mind we feel that the final two may not be as trustworthy resources as those we are more familiar with.

Results – which is the best PDF Editor?

The most surprising finding from the five articles is the diversity of offerings. Over the six articles twenty-five different PDF editors were mentioned. This is a huge number, way beyond the capacity of anyone to digest and make a considered judgement. If you are interested, you can find a detailed table of all the mentioned products HERE.

Best Overall – Adobe Acrobat Pro DC

Less surprising is the fact that Adobe Acrobat Standard/Pro DC comes comfortably out as the best all round option, variously described at ‘still the best for most people’, ‘best value’, ‘best overall’ and ‘best PDF editor for Windows’. In fact, all six of our reference articles had Adobe Acrobat Standard/Pro DC as a ‘best’ in at least one category (half of the six had it as ‘best overall’.

Actually, Adobe Acrobat Standard/Pro DC was the only PDF editor mentioned in all six source articles. However, it should be noted that neither the Standard or Pro DC are not free, though there is a free seven-day trial. In the UK, at the time of writing, Pro DC was around £30 per month, £20 a month if bought annually.

Best for Editing PDFs – pdfFiller

With the next most number of mentions, pdfFiller gets the thumbs up as Best PDF Editor in have of the articles surveyed as well as a mention for editing PDFs on mobile devices. The software has a range of locally installed versions as well as a web-version too, which is rated highly in some of the source articles. There’s a 30 day trial and the paid version is about half the price of Acrobat Standard and Pro DC.

Best of the Rest – PDF Expert and PDF-XChange Editor

With such a large number of products viewed over only six source articles, it’s very difficult to be objective. So in terms of number of mentions across the six source articles, PDF Expert and PDF-XChange Editor come in as ‘best of the rest’.

In fact, these two offers tie-in rather well together as they are both OS specific. PDF Expert is purely a Mac OS (including iOS) application whilst PDF-XChange Editor only offers Windows support. It still surprises us that there are OS-specific offers out there, as many of us use both Mac and Windows at work. That said, they are both highly rated and worth a look. In terms of pricing PDF Expert offer a lifetime license which is cheaper than the annual cost of an Adobe Acrobat Pro DC license.

Honorable Mentions

The list so far doesn’t mention some of the stalwarts and ‘old dependables’ in this space that are used by many hundreds of thousands if not millions of people globally. As noted at the beginning of the article, there are just too many to mention. So here is a list of those that didn’t make the cut.

• Apple Preview – if you’ve got a Mac, you’ve got Apple Preview, it’s an excellent free PDF tool.
• Xodo PDF Reader – a great tool available on pretty much every platform
• LibreOffice – This fully-fledged office suite is cross-platform. On Linux, LibreOffice Draw is one of the best PDF Editors
• Nitro PDF Pro – a competitively priced and well-known PDF Editor on both Windows and Mac
• Foxit PDF Editor – similarly priced to Nitro.

Conclusion

What you are looking for will depend on your specific needs, whether it’s comprehensive editing, collaboration, security, or cost-effectiveness. Adobe Acrobat Pro DC remains the top choice, though on price it seems to be the most expensive across the board.

If you really do need a PDF Editor, then the premium choice is obvious. But if you are looking to save half the cost of Adobe Acrobat (either Standard or Pro DC) you are going to need to put some time in finding one that is suitable for your needs. It’s probably worth a look at pdfFiller and see how you get on with it.

But… do you even need a PDF Editor?

However, a quick word of caution before you commit to the above. Do you really need a PDF Editor? What is it that you are looking to achieve? Are you looking simply to read digital documents? Not just PDFs, but Word Documents, Emails, Text files and so on? If so, with a PDF Editor or a PDF Reader, you are going to need to converting non-PDFs to PDFs before you can read them. Perhaps you need a Multi-Document Reader such as Casedo, not a PDF Editor?

After all, if you don’t need to edit a PDF, but perhaps just need to annotate, split or rotate documents, a PDF Editor will be overkill.

Further Reading

• • Meta Study: Best PDF Editors of 2024. Available at https://airtable.com/app6PGtO6YV6BmpNh/shrpCTlWmJut0H68h [Accessed 2024.08.29]