Mac PDF editors: an honest comparison

Eight PDF tools for the Mac, what each is genuinely best at, and — the part most comparison pages skip — which ones you should buy instead of ours.

Most "best PDF editor" roundups are affiliate pages that conclude with whatever pays best. This one has a different bias, and it is stated above: we make one of these apps. The way we have tried to make the page useful anyway is to organise it around the job you are trying to do rather than around a scoreboard, because the honest answer for most people is that the free tool already on their Mac is enough.

The short version

• You need to change the words already printed in the PDF, or read text off a scan. That is real PDF editing plus OCR, and it rules out most of the cheap options. Use PDFgear first because it is free, and move to Adobe Acrobat, PDF Expert or Foxit if it falls short. Not us — AddToPDF does neither.
• You want to spend nothing. PDFgear is the most capable free option, and Apple's Preview is already on your Mac and handles signing, annotation and page shuffling. Try both before you pay anyone, including us.
• You read academic papers. Skim, free and open source, is better at that than every paid app here.
• You also use Windows. We are Apple-only. PDFgear, Acrobat and Foxit are not.
• You need a compliance-grade signature workflow. Acrobat. This is not a close call.
• You keep hitting the same small jobs — add a line of text, sign it, tick the boxes, send it back — on more than one Apple device, and you resent paying monthly for it. That is the gap AddToPDF was built for, and it is a genuinely narrow one.

The comparison table

Pricing models verified against each vendor's own pages in August 2026. We deliberately do not list exact prices here — they change, and a stale number is worse than none. Follow the links for current figures.

The distinction that decides everything: "editing" means two different things

Almost every argument about PDF editors comes from this ambiguity. When someone says they want to edit a PDF, they mean one of two very different things.

Adding something on top — a line of text in a blank space, a signature, a date, a tick in a box, a black box over a bank account number. The original document is untouched underneath; you are placing new content over it. This is what most people need most of the time, and it is comparatively easy, which is why cheap and free tools can do it well.

Changing what is already there — rewriting a paragraph, fixing a typo in a printed sentence, reflowing text after a deletion. This is genuinely hard, because a PDF stores glyphs at coordinates rather than editable paragraphs, and the tool has to reconstruct the layout to change it. This is what you pay Acrobat, PDF Expert or Foxit for.

Where each tool genuinely wins

Adobe Acrobat — the default, and often the right default

Acrobat does everything: real text editing, OCR, redaction that actually removes the data, form creation, and e-signature workflows that hold up in regulated environments. It runs on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and the web. It is sold by subscription; Adobe also offers Acrobat Pro 2024 as a one-time payment, but read that carefully before assuming it is a perpetual licence — it is a term licence giving up to three years of desktop-only access, with security and bug fixes rather than new features. Adobe has said there will be no new perpetual version beyond Acrobat 2020. Acrobat Reader remains free for viewing.

Buy it if PDFs are a large part of your job, or someone in your organisation requires it. Skip it if you open a PDF twice a month.

PDF Expert — the best-feeling full editor on Apple hardware

If Acrobat feels like industrial equipment, PDF Expert feels like a Mac app. It edits text, does OCR, annotates fluidly, and covers Mac, iPhone and iPad. Its pricing has one detail worth reading twice: the annual subscriptions cover all three devices, but the one-time Lifetime licence covers the Mac version only, and its own page notes that additional new features may come at extra cost.

Buy it if you want a full-power editor and you live entirely on Apple devices. It is a better app than ours in every respect except price model and scope.

PDFgear — the one that makes paid apps justify themselves

PDFgear is free, requires no sign-up, and does a startling amount: text and image editing, OCR in more than thirty languages, merge, split, sign, fill forms, convert to and from Office formats, plus an AI assistant. It runs on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and the web.

We are including it prominently even though it undercuts us to zero, because leaving it out would make this page dishonest. If your test is "most capability for no money," PDFgear wins outright and you should try it before buying anything on this page. Two things to weigh: the AI assistant and the browser tools are cloud services rather than local processing, and a free product from a smaller vendor carries a different long-term support risk than a paid one — neither of which is disqualifying, both of which are worth knowing.

Smallpdf — convenient, and the one to think hardest about

Smallpdf is a browser-based suite: convert, compress, e-sign and edit from any machine with nothing installed, sold as an annual subscription with a short free trial and a mobile app. The convenience is real, and for a flyer or a public document it is a perfectly sensible choice.

The thing to be deliberate about is that browser-based processing means your document is uploaded to their servers. For a restaurant menu, fine. For a signed contract, a passport scan, a medical form or anything with a client's personal data on it, that is a decision rather than a detail — and depending on your profession it may be one your regulator has an opinion about.

Apple Preview — free, installed, and better than its reputation

Preview is more capable than people give it credit for. Apple's own documentation covers filling and signing PDF forms, highlighting and annotating, combining PDFs, adding, deleting, moving, cropping and rotating pages, password protection and export. It costs nothing and it is already there.

Its two real weaknesses are specific: adding new text to a flat PDF with no form fields is unreliable and fiddly, and interactive form fields do not always behave. It has no OCR and cannot edit existing body text. But if your job is "sign this and send it back," open Preview and stop reading this page.

Skim — the specialist that beats everyone at one thing

Skim is a free, open-source Mac reader and note-taker built for annotating scientific papers, with LaTeX, SyncTeX and BibDesk integration. It does not fill forms, add text, merge, split or sign — it is not trying to. For reading a literature pile, it is better than every paid app in this table.

Foxit PDF Editor — Acrobat features, buyable outright

Foxit offers Acrobat-class capability — text, image and page editing, conversion, OCR, forms, signatures, AI features — across Windows, Mac, mobile and web, and it is one of the few serious editors still selling a genuine perpetual licence alongside subscriptions. A free Foxit Reader covers viewing and annotation.

Buy it if you need full editing power but your organisation refuses recurring software costs.

AddToPDF — ours, and what it is not

AddToPDF is a deliberately small app for Mac, iPhone and iPad. It adds text anywhere on a page, signs, fills existing form fields, and reorders pages; on the Mac it also merges and splits; on iPhone and iPad it scans paper with the camera and hands the result back to the share sheet. It makes no network requests at all, and one purchase covers all three devices.

What it does not do, plainly: it cannot edit the existing text in a PDF, and it has no OCR. It cannot convert to Word. On iPhone and iPad it has no merge, split, shapes or image insertion. If any of those are on your list, buy something else on this page — several of the options are free.

AddToPDF — the app we make

A deliberately small PDF editor for Mac, iPhone and iPad: add text, sign, fill forms, organise pages. Fully offline, no account, one-time purchase covering all three devices. It does not edit existing body text or do OCR.

Download on the App Store

How to choose in one minute

1. Open Preview first. It is free and already installed. If it does the job, you are finished and this page cost you nothing.
2. If Preview cannot, ask which kind of editing you need. Adding on top, or changing what is printed? (See the section above — this is the whole decision.)
3. Changing what is printed, or OCR? Try PDFgear because it is free. If it is not enough, Acrobat, PDF Expert or Foxit — Foxit if you want to buy outright rather than subscribe.
4. Adding on top, repeatedly, on more than one Apple device? That is where a small one-time-purchase app such as ours earns its keep.
5. Handling anything confidential? Prefer a tool that processes on your machine over one that uploads to a server.

Frequently asked questions

Think we have got something wrong, or that a tool deserves better treatment here? Tell us — corrections to this page are the most useful feedback we get, and we would rather fix it than defend it.

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