Today, editing a PDF becomes a routine when you are desk-bound to work on files. That’s the reason why PDF Editor is always a hit in the app field. Even for Mac users, there are a wide range of options to edit PDF. Adobe Acrobat Pro DC? There is no doubt that the is first and most powerful Mac PDF Editor. Almost anything that can be done to a PDF can be done by Acrobat and you’ll pay for the privilege. But here I am willing to talk about why this powerful PDF editor doesn’t turn to be the best pick for a great part of PDF users.
First the price: it is quite expensive. An annual subscription costs $179.88 (us $14.99/month), and is also available as a stand-alone product for $449.
Second the usability: In our opinion, Adobe Acrobat Pro DC is not as easy to use, and most of those features has never or rarely put into use for most people. Still, it can work on only one PDF at one time, while we often need to batch process files at the same time. So, what’s the best PDF editor alternative to Acrobat? You may once flock to free web PDF editors like many of us, or turn to, but only to realize that, both web editors and Preview either fall short of our editing expectations or sheerly can not reach our requirements. To edit a PDF on mac smartly and feel right at home during the PDF work, here we pick the 2018 best PDF Editor for your Mac after slogging through dozens of PDF editors. Criteria of Evaluation To be measured up to our top options, we refer to following evaluation criteria to pinpoint the best PDF Editor for Mac 2018: User Interface – As the program is designed to deal with PDF files, which itself is a relatively tricky subject to be processed, we will need a quite clean yet beautiful user interface to be easily understood, so we can direct our attentions and efforts straight forward. A cluttered and poor interface will, not only distract us, but also quickly hit our patience limit to work intensively on PDF editing.
Mar 03, 2017 PDFpen Pro 8. I have both it and Acrobat DC on my Mac, IMO they're both on-par for features and are not peers to each other. If I had to give up my CC subscription, I pretty much wouldn't miss DC. Are there any solid alternatives to Acrobat Pro. I'm not into subscriptions. I'm looking for something that: scanner to PDF functionality merges.
Reading Experience – A fast reading experience will allow users to open and view a multiple-pages PDF file efficiently. The program should process the file importing sharply, and respond quickly when any action is taken. Besides, PDF format is designed for different platforms and devices, it becomes very critical if it can resize or fit in to look perfectly on different devices. Mark-up and Annotation – PDF offers a abundant of interactive elements to facilitate seamless group collaboration, while mark-up and annotation tools are the key behind this.
Editing Capability – Editing is the main task of a PDF editor, it should allow users to edit anything on the PDF page, no matter it is the PDF text, image or media elements. A satisfying PDF editor should be as powerful as possible to edit every single composition of the file. OCR(Optical Character Recognition) – The movement of “Go Paperless” not only builds us environment-friendly office, but also tucks more and more scanned image and PDF into our digital devices. To work on scanned files, OCR feature is necessary and will become indispensable when choosing a PDF editor.
Storing – A great part of PDF users prefer to store their large-size files in the Cloud, for the purpose to save space on devices, also for the purpose to edit and manage PDF files at anytime, anywhere. Allowing users to interact with Cloud service and store files in the Cloud will offer profound convenience for PDF users.
Additional features -To suit all the needs to edit a PDF, additional features is absolutely the killer. To redact sensitive information, to fill out forms, to reorder/delete pages, to export PDF to editable Word format, to digitally signWe all know, we are always asking more. Is the Superior Acrobat Alternative Solution To be frank, we’ve never thought that the final pick would go to PDFpen in the first place, but as we tested on different PDF files and read feedbacks from other PDF users online, we came to know PDFpen how beat its rivals. What is PDFpen? PDFpen from has everything you need to power your productivity with seamless PDF editing. Smile sells single-user licenses for $75 and $125 for the Pro versions.
PDFpenPro is as full featured as Acrobat in nearly every respect and PDFpen just a little less so, while Smile offers each at a standalone price that’s reasonable. PDFpen does 99% of what Acrobat boasts in a much easier, intuitive and quicker way. Let’s have a look! Reading experience PDFpen offers a blazing fast PDF reading experience. PDFpen opened the document in 1.5 seconds. Meanwhile, it took almost 10 seconds to load it with Acrobat. As you select between PDF pages, all the pages are well displayed with fast speed, even, there is no stop when I switch between different pages.
As PDFpen also offers iOS version, I uploaded a file into its iOS version, and the file fit in the device well, I got the same good reading experience as than on my Mac. Yet, there is a one thing PDFpen upsets me in PDF reading, it doesn’t allow users to open different PDFs at the same time, you are stuck to only one PDF file at one time. Mark-up and annotate important parts Remember the first time you wanted to find out how to change the annotation color in Acrobat — I bet you had a hard time.
But let’s take a look at PDFpen. You can see the differences at first glance.
The design is clean and intuitive. The lastest version 9 makes it possible to select multiple annotations at once, copy the text, delete them, and show highlights in the Annotations sidebar view.
You can also choose to print just annotations, making it easier to review comments separately from the document as another PDF or in print form. As you know, not each PDF editor enables users to print out PDFs with notes and comments added.
Besides, for those who require a table of contents (TOC) or need to work with one created elsewhere, PDFpenPro allows substantially more advanced TOC options for more sophisticated and less clunky interaction. Manage and reorder pages Microsoft Office Word is always deemed as the best tool to mange file pages.
However, in terms of managing pages, PDFpen won’t lose in the game. Like in Microsoft Office, PDFpen allows users to add page numbers, specify positioning and format.
Besides these, users can move up and down pages to reorder the file, select pages to delete, insert extra pages into the existing easily. No matter how many pages in your PDF file, it will be well organized in PDFpen. This really helps when you need to edit several individual and random PDF files at the same time. You just need to open one file, then insert other files. After selecting pages to move up or down for reordering, you will be able to edit the file and save it in desired sequence. Work on PDF text Text is always the dominant part of a file, so when we talk about editing a PDF, we mainly refer to editing PDF text. PDFpen helps users to work on PDF text in 3 flavors: Copy and paste text: you can copy and paste text with original fonts and formatting retained.
In case you want to extract some well-formatting text resources to another file, such a feature just cut your time on re-formatting greatly. Correct Text: in case there is mistaken PDF text, you can select the text you want to correct, then click “Correct Text” button, an editable text blocks will appear. Add Text: this is quite similar to the case when you want to correct PDF text. You can select the area where you want to add PDF text, then input the texts as needed. Scan & OCR Aside from performing OCR on scanned PDFs or image captures saved on your devices, the PDFpen is also able to scan papers from scanner then do the OCR to make the files as computer-readable documents.
The scanning feature is only activated when your device is bundled with a image capturer or connected to a TWAIN scanner. I scanned a paper document by taking captures from Mac camera, the scanning process is fast.
Under OCR process, you are allowed to adjust resolution, color depth, contract, skew and image size, with the aim to enhance OCR accuracy and precision. The Pro version lets you correct the text, too. Though I got to adjust formatting of several parts and re-typed several words, the OCR results from PDFpen proved to be brilliant. Fill and sign PDF forms Digital signature has used to replace physical signature for a long time, more and more PDF files are authenticated via digital signatures. PDFpen offers AATL or self-signed certificate to sign a documents. It also save your signatures in the library for further use.
Though you can only fill in the fields of PDF forms created from other software, PDFpen offers a Pro version for users to create and customize their own PDF forms. Sync and share PDFpen is both available on MacOS and iOS, which means users can sync the PDF files across all manner of Apple devices. It just becomes much easier if you are seeking a way to seamlessly work on different devices under different situations.
By the way, as the best PDF Editor for Mac, PDFpen also collaborates well with Evernote, users can save PDFs directly to Evernote. Either for the intention to save disk space or for the intention to work on the go, we upload PDF files to Cloud for storage. PDFpen also takes this into consideration, it allows users to store PDF files in iCloud and Dropbox, which makes PDF editing never stop. Additional editing features Still, there are 3 editing features from PDFpen that users should never miss out: Redact personal or sensitive information: no matter it is native PDF text or OCR text, PDFpen is capable of redacting or erase sensitive texts easily Record and playback audio annotations: it is an amazing way to add entertaining and innovative elements to your PDF files. Convert PDF to Word: if you want to convert PDF to editable Word to unlock more editing features, PDFpen allows to. Multiple versions In addition to multiple versions on different operating system (MacOS and iOS), there is PDFpen Pro version offered to suit users’ higher needs on PDF editing on mac.
Compared to PDFpen, it adds the features to convert websites to PDF, create and edit forms, export to Excel/PowerPoint/ and PDF/A, etc. Pricing Now, that we’ve got the features covered, let’s talk money. Acrobat DC currently costs $14.99 per month for a subscription or $449 for the full desktop software. While Smile only asks PDFpen single-user licenses for $75 and $125 for the out of your pocket and it’s jam-packed with all of the necessities.
![Mac Mac](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125621933/946398253.jpg)
PDFpen is also available via, a $9.99 monthly subscription service. Other Acrobat alternative we considered Awarded as “App of the Year” 2015 in the Mac App Store, PDF Expert($59.99) continues to outperform others today.
As it claims, it is a robust and beautiful PDF editor, helping users to edit, annotate PDF and manage PDF pages on mac, with a Share Sheet build in. I have to say, its neat and elegant interface just make users extremely comfortable to edit PDF within this program. You don’t have to explore the jumble of icons cluttered on the interface, everything you are looking for to edit your PDF, you are going to be navigated to.
Speaking of its powerful features, PDF Expert offers extensive tools to edit and annotate your files. You are given the power to edit PDF text, image, link or other objects, also you can harness its power to highlight, annotate, fill form, sign, etc. Yet, the major disadvantage of PDF Expert lies in its absence of OCR feature.
With a growing need to work on scanned PDF files, OCR functionality will be a must adds-on. Personally, I am quite looking forward to getting this OCR feature packed in PDF Expert in its following update. With a cost of $99.95, iSkysoft PDF Editor provides users all-round solutions to work on PDF files. Admittedly, it is a powerful PDF pack to manage PDF files, but the main problem is, it fails to offer a friendly user experience to its users. Foxit Software started out as one of the earliest competitors for Adobe Acrobat XI. Foxit introduced the PhantomPDF($129.00) line of PDF applications to compete with premium versions of Adobe Acrobat. But it, too much features embedded in the software, causing a much higher learing curves.
ABBYY FineReader($199.99) gets the same capabilities from an Adobe Acrobat, and shares many features with PDFpen. But it, too, comes with a higher price tag.
The bottom line PDFpen, according to my repeated tests and collected feedbacks from other users, it is faster than Preview and nearly as feature-packed as Adobe Acrobat DC, PDFpen is proof the sequel can be superior to the original in every way. If you are looking for a solution that provides similar capabilities as Adobe Acrobat but for a price that you can afford, then it is the time to evaluate as your Adobe Acrobat alternative.
Portable Document Format, or PDF, was developed back in the early nineties as a way to replace a number of competing formats like DjVu, Envoy, Fallaron, PostScript etc. In the early years of the World Wide Web. With Adobe controlling it as a proprietary format until 2008, Adobe Reader has been the go-to PDF Reader on our computers for as long as most of us can remember.
However, it is bloated, slow to load up and is certainly not the only option in the market if you’re looking for a free PDF reader. There are plenty of them available that comes with more features and are even less taxing on the resources than Adobe’s program, which is why we’ve decided to bring you our list of the top 10 Adobe Reader alternatives you can use on your Windows PC. Sumatra PDF Sumatra is a free and pen source PDF reader that has a simple, intuitive user-interface, and is light on your computer’s resources. The program was first released back in 2006, and is hosted on Github, like many of its open source compatriots. What’s truly remarkable is that while Adobe Reader is a massive 105MB download, Sumatra PDF weighs in at just over 4MB.
The best thing about the program is how fast it is compared to some of the other similar programs in the market. It starts up almost instantaneously, and renders even complex documents in the blink of an eyelid. Sumatra PDF is, admittedly, a bit short on features compared to some of its rivals, but it does come with a large number of keyboard shortcuts to help users navigate pages quickly and efficiently. It also comes in both portable and installer versions, so as an user, you’re able to carry it on a USB flash drive to read documents on any computer anywhere.
Another point to note here is that the program is able to open not just PDF files, but is a complete ebook reader with the ability to read various other file formats, such as ePub, Mobi, XPS, CHM, DjVu, CBZ, CBR etc. Foxit Reader Foxit Reader is another top-tier alternative to the Adobe Reader, and comes with many of the features that Sumatra PDF lacks. As a trade-off, it is neither as lightweight, nor as fast, but is perhaps, the best option if you want anything more than barely opening and reading PDF documents. Not only can Foxit Reader annotate PDF documents, it also allows users to fill PDF forms making it stand out from most of its free competitors. The program also offers a Safe Reading Mode that shields users from malicious links within PDF documents and provides control over JavaScript integration. As can be seen from the image above, Foxit Reader also has an MS Office-like ribbon-based interface, which makes the learning curve much less steep for people using the program for the first-time. It also comes with a a variety of free downloadable addons that allows users to convert PDFs to other document file formats (and vice versa) by integrating into the Windows Explorer context menu.
Overall, the program is one of the best, most powerful, flexible and customizable PDF readers available today, and should be more than enough for 99% of users. PDF X-Change Editor PDF Exchange Editor is yet another excellent choice as an Adobe Reader replacement.
It comes in both paid and free avatars, and while the paid versions offer premium features, the free version is also fairly feature-packed when compared to some of the other programs in the market. With the free version, you can not only insert or extract pages, but it also comes with a great little feature called OCR (optical character recognition) that allows you to scan any printed document and save the text as a PDF. While PDF viewing and editing options are exactly what you’d expect from a program that advertises itself as such, PDF X-Change Viewer actually offers a whole lot more than just that.
It also offers support for 256-bit AES encryption, page markup and text extraction, while also allowing users to apply custom stamps to their files before saving. On the negative side, the free version doesn’t allow users to create a PDF document from scratch. Download:, 4. STDU Viewer Science and Technical Documentation Utility (STDU) Viewer is a document and image viewer that comes as a tiny 2.5MB download and, supports a wide variety of file formats, ranging from PDF to TIFF and JPEG to GIF. In addition to these popular formats, the program can also open a whole host of file types, like, DjVu, XPS, JBIG2, FB2, TXT, e-books (ePub and Mobi), comic book archives (CBR and CBZ), TCR, PalmDoc (PDB), AZW and DCX. As for images, STDU Viewer can open BMP, PCX, PNG, WMF, EMF and PSD alongside the two other formats mentioned above.
One of the great things about STDU Viewer is its multi-language interface support, with users able to choose between English, Russian and French. The program has a tabbed interface and comes with just about all the features you’d expect from a free document viewer including thumbnail view, rotate page, search by text layer etc. You can also export a page (or part of a page) as an image and create your own bookmarks. STDU viewer is free for non-commercial or educational use, but you’ll need to pay up to be able to use it for commercial purposes. Nitro PDF Viewer Nitro PDF Reader is a full-featured PDF viewer that, unlike PDF X-Change, allows users to also create PDF files from scratch.
Like Foxit Reader, it also comes with an interface that resembles MS Office, and allows users to annotate, highlight and add sticky notes to the documents you open. One of its unique features is a split-screen view that allows users to compare two different PDF files side-by-side. The program also comes with drag-and-drop support, allowing users to quickly create new PDF file by simply dragging any document on the Nitro desktop icon. Nitro PDF Reader comes in two different versions – a free option that is available for non-commercial use and a paid avatar that starts at $159.99.
However, the free version itself is fairly feature-packed, and offers users the ability to extract images from existing PDFs as well as digitally sign documents with an e-signature. Overall, it is definitely a program worth checking out if you’re looking for a free alternative to the Adobe Reader. Download:, 6. SlimPDF Reader As is evident from its name, SlimPDF Reader is a small and lightweight PDF reader available for desktop Windows.
The program weighs in at just 1.4MB, making it, by far, the smallest actively-developed PDF viewer we know of right now. Like Sumatra PDF, this one also has a minimalist interface and, works exactly as advertised for the most part. It doesn’t really offer too many bells and whistles, which is of course, understandable given its tiny footprint. If bloatware on your PC is a big concern for you and you’re not really looking to create, annotate or otherwise do anything more with PDF files than just viewing them, this piece of software should be the one you need to check out before trying out anything else. Sure, it doesn’t offer some of the features that programs like Adobe Reader comes with, but then again, its whole purpose is to offer you a basic PDF reader with the lowest footprint, and that, it does with aplomb. On the negative side, though, SlimPDF Reader doesn’t have a portable version, which is a bit strange for any program whose USP is its small size.
Evince Evince is a free and open source (FOSS) document viewer that is available on Windows, Linux and Unix-like operating systems. It is included as the default PDF viewer in Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu.
The program was originally designed for the GNOME desktop environment and, support a multitude of file formats, including PDF, PostScrip, DjVu, TIFF, XPS and DVI. Like Nitro PDF, Evince can also display two pages at once, and supports full-screen and slide-shows. The program also allows users to select, highlight and even copy text from PDF files, provided, they include the OCR data. However, the most interesting thing about Evince is that it allows users to copy, convert and print PDF files that are protected by DRM restrictions. While users can always turn off the feature if they so desire, it is turned on by default, making this a perfect choice for users looking to circumvent suffocating DRM restrictions. Download: (Windows, Linux, Unix-like) 8.
PhantomPDF PhantomPDF is a full-feature paid PDF Reader software that comes from Foxit Software, the makers of Foxit Reader. Like its free counterpart, PhantomPDF also comes with a Ribbon-based interface that resembles MS Office, and offers PDF editing and encryption features. The program can convert multiple different file types to PDF and PDF to a whole host of different files including, MS Word documents. PhantomPDF supports as many as 41 different languages, and while that’s not as many as that of Adobe Acrobat, it’s still more than most of its other competitors. PhantomPDF also comes with OCR that allows users to edit and search scanned documents, although, unlike some of the other programs on this list which natively supports OCR, you’ll need to download a module separately to be able to activate the feature on this software. On the positive side, the program allows users to add audio and video files to PDFs as well as secure them with passwords and permissions.
PdfDocs pdfDocs is the second and final paid PDF reader on our list today. It is describes by its developer, DocsCorp, as a “ project-centric PDF management application“, which is a way of saying that it brings many of the features that you’d expect from productivity suits like Google Docs. The software allows users to not just create, redact, annotate and edit PDF files unlike some other consumer-centric premium PDF management programs, but also collate and secure PDF files, as well as print, email and save documents from within the Organizer workspace that can be setup for specific projects and shared on a network drive among colleagues and co-workers. Being a business-oriented software suite, pdfDocs also allows users to create electronics PDF binders that automate the process of converting a large number of documents into a single PDF file. As you’d expect, it is neither the smallest nor the fastest of the readers we’ve tested, but speed was never going to be its USP anyways, seeing as productivity in an office environment is what it’s designed for.
Download: 10. Web Browsers: Firefox, Chrome and Edge This particular option wouldn’t have been a part of this article had we been compiling this list a few years ago. Over the past few years, all major browser vendors have started including a native PDF viewer with their respective web-browsers. That being the case, just about everybody already has a PDF viewer on their computers whether they realize it or not. Firefox was the first web-browser to integrate the PDF viewer functionality when it incorporated the web standards-based pdf.js platform for parsing and rendering PDF files. Google followed that up by bringing the feature to Chrome and now, even Microsoft Edge, can natively render PDF documents in Windows 10.
Unless you really need many of the complex features of the standalone programs, using your favorite web-browser as your PDF viewer will save your disk space and prevent your computer from getting all clogged up with unnecessary software. You may not get all the features that advanced PDF management software will bring to the table, but all these browsers will be able to render standard PDF documents quickly and correctly without putting too much of a strain on your system. Download: (Windows, Mac, Linux) Download: (Windows, Mac, Linux) SEE ALSO: The Best Adobe Reader Alternatives For Your Windows PC While the aforementioned programs are all excellent choices as Adobe Reader alternatives, they are not the only choices you have.
If you’re running Windows 8 or 8.1, you also get a native PDF viewer that’s simply named ‘Reader’. Most Office suites, like MS Office and, also allow users to read, create, annotate and edit PDF files, so if you have either installed on your computer, you can easily use either MS Word or Libre Office Writer to get the job done. So now that you know about so many Adobe Reader alternatives, which one are you most interested in? Do let us know in the comments section below.