The 13 Best Free PDF Editors (May 2023)

Use these PDF editors and online tools to change your PDF files absolutely free

Looking for a truly free PDF editor that lets you not only edit and add text but also change images, add your own graphics, sign your name, fill out forms, and more? You came to the right place: We've researched these types of apps to come up with a list of exactly what you're looking for.

Some of these are online editors that work in your web browser, so all you have to do is upload your PDF to the website, make the changes you want, and then save it back to your computer. That's ​the quick way—but do bear in mind that, typically, a web-based editor isn't as fully featured as its desktop counterpart, plus the file is exposed to the internet (which might be of concern if it contains sensitive content).

Because not all of these editors support the same features, and some are restricted in what you can do, remember that you can process the same PDF in more than one tool. For example, use one to edit the PDF text (if that's supported), and then put the same PDF through a different editor to do something supported in that program (e.g., to edit a form, update an image, or remove a page).

If you don't need to change the contents of the file but instead just need to change it to another format (such as .docx for Microsoft Word or .epub for an eBook), see our list of free document converters for help. On the other hand, if you have a file you created yourself that you want to save as a PDF file, learn how to print to PDF.

If you already own a modern version of Microsoft Word (2021, 2019, 2016, etc.), then skip all the suggested programs below: you have a great PDF editor at your disposal right now. Just open the PDF as you would any Word document, give the program a few minutes to convert the PDF, and then edit away. This also works in WPS Office and Google Docs.

Featured Link: How to Change a PDF to a Word Document

Don't want to work in Word? Then check out our list of favorites to find an option that better suits you.

Sejda PDF Editor is one of the very few PDF editors that actually lets you edit pre-existing text in the PDF without adding a watermark. Most editors only let you edit the text you add yourself, or they support text editing but then throw watermarks all over the place.

Plus, this tool can run entirely in your web browser, so it's easy to get going without having to download any programs. You can get the desktop version if you'd rather use it that way.

There are some differences between the online and desktop versions that you should know about. For example, the desktop edition supports more font types and doesn't let you add PDFs by URL or from online storage services as the online editor does (which supports Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive).

Another neat feature is the web integration tool that lets PDF publishers provide a link for their users that they can simply click to automatically open the file in this editor.

All uploaded files are automatically deleted from Sejda after two hours.

This tool works no matter which operating system you use. Sejda PDF Desktop runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Featured Link: EXTERNAL: Visit Sejda.com

You can use the online or desktop version to convert PDF to Word, and vice versa.

PDFgear is a full toolkit for doing pretty much anything you could want to do with a PDF.

Beyond basic PDF viewing and full text editing are options to add a signature, convert the file to other formats, extract text, annotate and insert your own watermark, rotate and delete pages, add a password, compress the PDF, and more. You can even present the PDF as a slideshow if you want to.

Something we really like is the Extract Text tool. It lets you highlight any part of the page to pull out text into an easily usable text box so you can copy that content. This is great for lists and other situations where selecting PDF text is usually difficult.

This program runs on Windows and macOS.

Featured Link: EXTERNAL: Download PDFgear

Featured Link: How to Use Canva

Canva is a very capable website for creating unique, high-quality designs. While you could create a project from scratch or a template, another way you can use its editing tools is on a PDF.

Unlike most free tools, Canva lets you fully edit text. Click into any text area to change what the text says and to adjust the font type, size, and color. You can also add hyperlinks to text and other objects, and special fonts are available to easily type out your signature.

Of course, because this is a full graphic design platform, it has a wealth of other tools so you can also edit images, add shapes, edit and build PDF pages, include charts, etc. If you have most of your media on another site like Google Photos or Dropbox, you can connect to those services to easily copy files into your PDF.

PDFs can't exceed 15 MB or 15 pages. When you're done, you can save back to PDF or choose from various image and video formats.

Featured Link: EXTERNAL: Visit Canva

PDF-XChange Editor offers some great tools, but not all of them are free to use. If you use a non-free feature, the PDF will save with a watermark on every page.

If you stick to just the free features, however, you can still do some editing to the file and save it back to your computer.

You can load PDFs from your computer, a URL, SharePoint, Google Drive, and Dropbox. You can save the edited PDF back to your computer or to any of those cloud storage services.

There are lots of features, so it might seem overwhelming at first. All the options and tools are simple to understand, however, and they're categorized into their own sections for easier management.

One nice feature is the ability to highlight all the form fields so that you can easily spot where you need to fill in. This is really helpful if you're editing a PDF with lots of forms, such as an application.

Many of the features are free (like editing the text), but some are not. If you use a feature that's not covered by the free version (you're told which ones aren't free when you use them), the saved PDF file will have a watermark attached to the corner of every page. There's a comprehensive list of all the free features on the download page.

Windows 11, 10, 8, and 7 users can install PDF-XChange Editor. You can download it in portable mode to use on a flash drive or as a regular installer.

Download PDF-XChange Editor

Inkscape is an extremely popular free image viewer and editor, but it also includes PDF editing functions that most dedicated PDF editors support only in their paid editions.

This is a very capable image editing program. If you're not already familiar with programs like GIMP, Adobe Photoshop, and other image editors, however, it's probably a bit advanced for you.

In the context of PDF editing, though, you should consider this software only if you want to delete or edit the images or text in the PDF. We suggest you use a different tool in this list to edit PDF forms or add shapes, and then plug that PDF into Inkscape if you need to actually edit the preexisting text.

You can install it on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Related: How to Make Text Adjustments in Inkscape

Download Inkscape

TinyWow is an amazing service with loads of free PDF tools, one of which is this editor.

All the functions you need are available here: Edit text, add text, highlight and blackout items, include shapes and checkmarks, import the date and time, upload images, and add your signature. You can also rotate, delete, and add new pages to your document.

Files can be uploaded from your device or your Google Drive account. All edited documents can be saved back to a .pdf file.

Featured Link: EXTERNAL: Visit TinyWow

FormSwift's Free PDF Editor is a very simple online option that you can start using without even making a user account (although, you'll need one when you save).

It's as simple as uploading your PDF file to the website and using the menus at the top of the page to quickly perform some basic PDF editing functions before downloading it back to your computer.

For example, you can add circles, checkmarks, and "x" icons over any text; easily type, draw, or sign on the file; and insert your own images.

When you're done editing, you can download the file as a PDF file, print it directly to your printer, or save as a .docx document.

The .pdf-to-.docx conversion didn't work for every PDF that we tried, but in those that did convert successfully, the images were formatted nicely and the text was fully editable.

FormSwift's Convert Images to PDF page lets you quickly edit or sign PDFs from your phone by taking a picture of a document. You can then share or download the PDF when you're done. It's not perfect: Most things done through a web app are spotty. It does work, however, with a little patience.

You can upload Word documents and images to FormSwift, too, if you need to edit those instead of a PDF. 

All operating systems can use this since it works online.

Featured Link: EXTERNAL: Visit FormSwift

Draw is LibreOffice's flowchart and diagram program, but it also lets you open and edit PDFs. Use the File > Open menu to select the PDF you want to edit, and then zoom up to the text to select and change whatever you want.

One of the neat things about editing PDFs with this program is that it's made for creating and manipulating objects, so you can just as easily edit non-text things, too, like images, headings, colors, etc.

When you're ready to save, don't use the typical save option; go instead to File > Export As to find the PDF option.

It works with Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Download LibreOffice

SimplePDF is a website with several PDF editing tools built specifically for editing and filling out PDF forms.

While you can't edit existing text like some of the competition, it does support adding text, as well as checkboxes, signatures, and pictures. This might be enough for you, depending on what you need from a PDF editor.

A few reasons we like this website so much are that it's not cluttered with ads, you can import a PDF from Dropbox or Google Drive, and saving your PDF is fast and easy without a watermark or user account necessary.

If there are multiple PDFs you want to merge into one document, SimplePDF can do that, too. You can also rearrange the pages, rotate them, and delete individual pages.

See the SimplePDF Pricing page if you need more features like unlimited submissions, custom subdomain support, email notifications, and more.

Featured Link: EXTERNAL: Visit SimplePDF

PDFescape has quite a lot of features. It's free as long as the document doesn't exceed 100 pages or 10 MB.

You can't truly change text or edit images for free using this editor, but you can add your own text, images, links, form fields, etc. 

The text tool is very customizable so that you can pick your own size, font type, color, alignment, and apply effects such as bolding, underlining, and italics.

You also can draw on the PDF, add sticky notes, strikethrough text, put white space over anything you want to disappear, and insert lines, checkmarks, arrows, ovals, circles, rectangles, and comments.

PDFescape lets you delete individual pages from the PDF, rotate pages, crop out parts of a page, reorganize the order of the pages, and add more pages from other PDFs.

You can upload your own PDF file, paste the URL to an online PDF, and make your own PDF from scratch. 

When finished editing, you can download the PDF to your computer without ever having to make a user account. You need one only if you want to save your progress online without downloading the PDF.

The online version works in all operating systems. There's also an offline editor that runs on Windows, but it isn't free.

Featured Link: EXTERNAL: Visit PDFescape.com

One of the quickest ways to add images, text, shapes, or your signature to a PDF is with Smallpdf.

This website allows you to upload a PDF, make changes to it, and then save it back to your computer, all without needing to make a user account or pay for any anti-watermarking features.

You can open files from your computer or your Dropbox or Google Drive account.

Importing shapes is possible if you want a rectangle, square, circle, arrow, or line. You can change the object's main color and line color, as well as the thickness of its edge.

Text size can be small, regular, medium, large, or extra large, but you can't change the font type, just the color.

When finished editing the PDF, you can decide where you want it saved; to your device or your Dropbox account. You can also generate a share link that anyone can use to download the PDF. Something else you can do is run the document through Smallpdf's PDF splitter tool if you want to extract the pages.

After editing one document, you'll have to wait several hours to keep using the site, or upgrade/pay.

This site works with all operating systems that support a modern web browser.

Featured Link: EXTERNAL: Visit Smallpdf.com

This website is incredibly simple, which is good or bad, depending on what you're wanting it to do.

We add this PDF editor to our list because it lets you easily sign your name on any PDF. There aren't any extra features that get in the way, it doesn't put a watermark on your document, and it's just overall very easy to use if you just need a quick way to add your signature to a PDF.

If you want to, you can also include your written name and a date.

Featured Link: EXTERNAL: Visit JustSignPDF.com

PDFelement is free, but with a major limitation: It places a watermark on every page of the document. That being said, the watermark is behind everything, so you can still see the content, and it's important to realize that it supports some truly great PDF editing features.

This program would be a truly free PDF editor if it weren't for the fact that the free edition will not save without first putting a watermark on every single page of the PDF.

Depending on what you'll use the PDF for, however, the features it supports might be enough for you to consider living with the watermarks.

When you're done editing, you can save back to PDF or any of the several other supported formats, including Word and other MS Office formats. To export or save, you have to have a Wondershare account.

Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS are supported.

Download For:

Android

iOS

Mac

Windows

PDF BOB is a free online PDF editor that requires no user account. Just upload your file, make the changes you need to, and then export it to PDF again to finish up.

There are several tools here, like a text option that lets you select a custom color and font type, an image picker, a colored pencil/marker, and a few shape tools.

It uses OCR to identify the text, so things like the strikeout and underline tool look great, and all you have to do is double-click the word you want to apply it to.

You can also use this website to delete pages from the PDF and add new ones to it. When you save, there's even a password option to secure the document.

When you're done editing, export to the PDF format or, if you log in, JPG and PNG. Files can be saved back to your computer or imported directly into Google Drive or Dropbox.

Although PDF BOB doesn't let you edit the PDF text, you can convert the PDF to a Word format to do so in a word processor.

Featured Link: EXTERNAL: Visit PDF BOB

How do I edit a PDF on Chromebook?

To edit a PDF on Chromebook, use a third-party app like Sejda, DocFly, or Soda PDF Online. Most Chromebooks do not come with a PDF editor app by default.

How do I edit PDFs on iPhone or iPad?

To edit PDFs on an iPhone or iPad, go to Files, open a PDF, then swipe from the left edge of the screen to open the thumbnail view. Press and hold a page to open the edit menu.

How do I make a PDF file?

To make a PDF file in Word, go to File > Save as > PDF. On Google Docs, go to File > Download > PDF Document (.pdf). On Mac Pages, go to File > Print > Save as PDF.

How do I combine PDF files?

To combine PDF files, use the Soda PDF Online merge tool. Select Choose File, choose a PDF > Open. Repeat for the second PDF and select Merge.

Best PDF editors in 2023

The best PDF editors enable you to get even more done with PDF files but the real question is which PDF editor is best suited to your needs and workflow. 

Despite their finalized appearance, Portable Document Format files can be changed in the same way you alter a text document – you just need the right software. The best PDF editors let you open up almost any PDF file so that you can edit, alter, annotate, sign or convert it to other popular file formats including Microsoft Word. 

If you regularly work with PDF files as part of your job or in your free time then one of the best PDF editors will make things even easier for you. We’ve tested more than a half-dozen different options and these are the best ones for altering text, changing images and annotating PDF files. On a tight budget, these are the best free PDF editors.

1. Acrobat Pro DC

Best PDF editor for Windows

Cost: $240/year

Developer: Adobe

Compatibility: macOS, Windows

Category: PDF editor

Full-featured PDF editing and annotation tool

Excellent OCR

You'd expect Adobe Acrobat Pro DC to be great because it comes from Adobe, the birthplace of the portable document format. To some extent, this full-service PDF-editing application meets that expectation.

Acrobat Pro DC offers a complete set of PDF-editing tools, and it even lets you edit scanned documents. Acrobat DC's OCR engine can convert scanned documents to text, which you can then search through and change. 

But Acrobat doesn't allow you to convert an entire document the moment you open it. Instead, the app waits for you to begin using the Pro DC's edit tools, recognizing and converting the pages as you select them for editing. Changing text in an OCR'd document was simple and the results look great.

It's also easy to edit images and text in documents you haven't scanned. I was able to make changes to everything with zero issues.

What I don't like about Acrobat Pro DC is the interface. It feels like a half-realized demo of what the app could be. Editing tools surround your document, and the UI feels disorganized, offering few options for customization. 

Since it's designed to work on both Macs and PCs, Acrobat Pro DC looks like it belongs in neither environment. This doesn't make this program bad at what it's supposed to do; it just makes you feel like you're working outside your chosen OS.

2. PDF Candy

Best free PDF editor

Cost: Free

Developer: Icecream Apps

Compatibility: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, Safari

Category: OCR, PDF editing, file conversion

Today's best pdfcandy deals

OCR capabilities

Extensive features for converting, creating files

Solid layout tools for PDFs

Limited text editing features

Our pick for the best free PDF editor is PDF Candy, because it offers something many free options do not — an OCR feature for scanning text. You can't edit OCR'd text in this web-based PDF editor, but you are able to upload PDF files and extract text and create a text document, RTF file, or Word document in both .doc and .docx formats.

You can choose from 44 tools to create or convert PDF files. It's also easy to rearrange pages within a document, add watermarks, protect PDF files with passcodes, edit metadata within a PDF file, split or add pages to documents, and extract images. Actual text editing is pretty limited, the trade-off you make to enjoy a fairly feature-rich free PDF editor.

Once you've made your edits in PDF Candy, you can download the edited document or upload a new document to work on. PDF Candy keeps all of your documents in a queue so you can download them all at once after you've finished making changes to them.

3. PDFescape

Best PDF-annotation tool

Cost: Free; $36/year for premium account

Developer: Avanquest

Compatibility: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, Safari

Category: PDF annotation

Today's best pdfcandy and pdfescape deals

Free online PDF editing

No registration required

Web-based annotation tools are easy to understand and use

Extremely limited font options when you add text

Desktop version requires a subscription

PDFescape is a basic, web-based PDF-editing and -annotation program you can use for free to work on PDF documents that are smaller than either 10MB or 100 pages, whichever is greater. (PDFescape used to limit you to 50 pages, so the higher limit is a welcome change.) If you need to edit larger files, you can upgrade to a premium account for $36 a year. There's also an "ultimate" plan for $72 per year.

Accessible through any modern web browser, PDFescape offers no OCR capabilities like PDF Candy does. But PDFescape's annotation tools are easy to use. You'll find a pretty solid set of standard annotation tools that can easily add, highlight and strike through text; insert notes; and otherwise mark up the pages of your PDF file. Using the web app's insert tools, you can also add new images and text to a document, white-out text, and add web links and form fields.

PDFescape does have some major limitations in adding new text. Because there are no OCR capabilities, you can't make changes to existing text; you're limited to adding new text to an existing document. Additionally, the app has very limited font options, as it doesn't use any of your computer's fonts. So you're limited to Arial, Courier New, Times New Roman, Verdana and a Signature font for signing documents.

4. Apple Preview

Built-in PDF annotation for macOS

Cost: Free with macOS

Developer: Apple

Compatibility: macOS

Category: PDF annotation

Excellent annotation tools

Easy-to-use signature capture

Markup features are often available in other apps

Locating annotation tools not obvious

Mac only

Apple's Preview app is built-in to macOS and offers a minimalist but valuable set of tools for marking up any PDF file. You won't find full-on PDF editing here. But if you need a basic set of tools for highlighting or redacting text, making notes, or adding comments to a document, you won't likely need much more than what's already available on your Mac.

Preview's markup tools are hidden when you first open a PDF document. To see them, you'll have to look for the small pencil icon that appears near the Spotlight search bar at the top of your PDF document's toolbar. Clicking this reveals a small set of tools you can use to select text and add objects, text or notes to your document.

The app's standout feature is a signature tool you can use to store a signature you create using your trackpad or scan using your Mac's camera. You can then easily add that signature to a document by clicking Preview's Signature tool. Simple and easy to use once you set it up, Preview's signing feature will prove its usefulness every time a digital document requires your John Hancock.

You can access all of Preview's editing tools without opening Preview, as long as you're running macOS 10.14 Mojave or later. Just use QuickLook to view a PDF, then click on the Markup button in that mode.

5. PDF Expert

PDF editor with the cleanest interface

Cost: $80 one-time license purchase

Developer: Readdle

Compatibility: macOS

Category: PDF editor

Clean, easy-to-use interface

AI-powered Enhance feature

Editing tools appear when you need them and hide when you don't

Difficulties with larger files

Mac-only

Readdle's macOS-only PDF Expert is a popular PDF-editing tool that allows you to make changes to text in existing PDF documents by removing and replacing images, updating text, and adding text of your own. PDF Expert lacks OCR capabilities, so if you want to edit text in scanned documents, you'll need to look beyond this program.

Of all the apps I tested, PDF Expert has the cleanest interface and therefore was the most pleasant to use. Two tabs appear at the top of the screen: Annotate and Edit. Clicking one of them gives you an appropriate selection of tools to perform either annotation or editing tasks.

PDF Expert's editing tools are flawless. Click text in your PDF, and tools for editing text will slide out so you can make changes. Select an image, and tools for changing the image appear. You can move selected text anywhere on the page you want or remove it altogether.

PDF Expert struggles with large documents; otherwise, this would have been my top pick for Mac. However, every time I attempted to open my nearly 450-page test file, PDF Expert hung. Until this program behaves more dependably, look elsewhere if you tend to work with larger documents. There's also a Windows version in development and you can sign up to get notified when it's ready.

6. PDFelement Pro

PDF editor with some quirks

Cost: $130/year

Developer: Wondershare

Compatibility: macOS, Windows, iOS, Android

Category: PDF editor

Opened and recognized text in every document

1 GB of cloud storage included

Lifetime license available

Bizarre text-editing behavior

Wondershare's PDFelement Pro is a full-featured PDF editor with an OCR engine for recognizing scanned text and a standard set of tools. With those, you can fill in forms, annotate documents, create and add signatures, and edit images within a document.

PDFelement had no problem opening anything I threw at it, including scanned documents, large files and image-heavy PDFs. Once documents are open, PDFelement Pro offers a fairly simple interface, with a set of tools on the left side of your document that are easy to figure out. Just select a tool, and you can go to work making changes to a file.

Editing images, adding signatures and using annotations in the application all worked as planned, but I did experience some odd behaviors when I was editing or adding text using PDFelement Pro. In particular, when I was editing existing text in a document, the application wanted to make the text bold and would not allow me to change the content back to regular text. Also, when I added new text boxes, my own text did not display normally; the program always added a space after I typed an apostrophe. And the program constantly played my Mac's system beep as I typed. That's both annoying and not optimal.

7. Sejda PDF Desktop Pro

A PDF editor with too many limitations

Cost: $63/year

Developer: Sejda

Compatibility: macOS, Windows

Category: PDF annotation

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Can edit text, though on a limited basis

Can add images and annotate your documents

Paid weekly pass available

Very limited features

Paragraphs are treated as individual lines of text

Cannot remove or edit existing images

Sejda is a web-based PDF-editing application that works on any OS that has a modern web browser. A desktop version converts that web interface into something that runs on your computer. 

You can use a free version of Sejda, but it limits the number of daily tasks you can perform and the size of the documents you can access. 

To get the most out of the program, you can buy an annual license for both the web and desktop versions for $63. You can also buy a weekly pass for both versions for $8 if you've got a one-time project that requires Sejda.

Sejda has no OCR engine, so you can't use this app to edit PDF files created from scanned documents. You can edit only PDF files that already have selectable text.

To edit your PDF file, you upload it to the Sejda website and then use the toolbar at the top of the page to choose your tools. You'll find tools for editing text, adding links, adding form fields and images, and signing or annotating your document. All of Sejda's tools are rudimentary at best. 

The app breaks every line of text in your document into a single text entry, so you can't edit entire paragraphs of text. When you do edit existing text, remnants of the previous text often get left behind in the document. Sejda will let you add new images to a document, but you can't use the app to edit or remove existing images.

Sejda isn't a great app, but it works in a pinch when you need to make a quick change to an existing PDF document and you have no other tools at hand.

The first question you should ask yourself when choosing a PDF editor is what you plan to do with it. If it’s just to mark up documents and add digital signatures, PDF annotation software will better suit your needs.

As there are many well-featured PDF annotation programs that are available for free, you can save yourself some money. For instance, as we mentioned, Mac users can save even more time since the Preview app that ships with Apple’s computers includes markup and signature tools.

It also doesn’t cost much, or even anything at all, to create a PDF. You can do so from a Word document or a web page, and also convert a PDF to a Word doc or a JPEG.

However, if you’re in the market for a full-fledged PDF editor that lets you manipulate text and create documents, consider what kinds of features you’ll need for PDF editing. Applications with good OCR capabilities will likely cost more but if you don’t need OCR, you may be able to make do with a free PDF editor.

While PDF editors are great for making changes or notes to documents, they’re not necessary if you simply want to view and read a PDF. For that, check out our list of the best PDF readers you can download. 

We looked at both PDF editors and applications used for making annotations in PDFs. Every PDF editor can also annotate documents but dedicated PDF-annotation tools aren’t actually designed to make changes to any of the original content in a PDF document.

While testing each of these applications, we used a few different types of documents including large, text-heavy files, documents with a mix of formatted images and text and simple documents with text and images inserted into the document in a linear fashion. We tested features like text recognition (when supported) and we tried making changes to text, replacing and adding images and adding annotations.

For more on our testing procedures, check out this guide on how Tom’s Guide tests, reviews and rates products. 

Round up of today's best deals

Best free PDF editors 2023: Our top picks

PDF editors are an indispensable tool for those who frequently work with PDF files. Whether it’s part of your job, you manage PDF files for your own personal use, or you just need to complete a one-off editing task, a top editor program is an essential piece of software. Full-featured editors such as Adobe’s Acrobat Pro DC might provide all of the bells and whistles, but a free PDF editor can still offer most of the important tools of a paid service for no additional charge.

Plus, free PDF editors are typically browser based, meaning you won’t need to worry about platform- or device-compatibility issues.

Of course, free products won’t come with every feature of their paid counterparts. So, if you find that you need more advanced tools such as password protection, bates numbering, or e-signatures, then you’re probably better served by one of the best premium PDF editors.

PDF Candy – Best free PDF editor overall

Pros

Cons

Price When Reviewed: Free

PDF Candy is the rare free PDF editor that offers a lot of the features you’d typically have to pay for. We’re talking scanning, multiple file-conversion options, and OCR functionality. While the free version has access to the expansive toolset of the paid version, you’re limited to one PDF task per hour. For unfettered access, you need to shell out $6 month.

Apple Preview PDF editor – Best free PDF editor for Mac users

Pros

Cons

Price When Reviewed: Built into macOS

Mac users have an excellent PDF editor built right into their operating system. Although its ostensibly a photo viewer, macOS’s Preview app is rife with PDF-editing capabilities including tools for adding text and shapes, redacting content, making freehand drawings, inserting sticky notes, and capturing your signature using your trackpad, camera, or iPhone.

Sejda PDF editor – Most versatile free PDF editor

Pros

Cons

Price When Reviewed: Free (Premium $7.50 p/m)

Offered as both an online tool and a desktop editor, Sejda is capable of performing dozens of tasks including editing, form creation and filling, Bates stamping, file encryption, and more. If the daily usage limits are too restrictive for you, you can upgrade to the affordable paid version.

While there are a number of different types of PDF file formats, they all fall under the umbrella term of PDF documents. A PDF form is a type of PDF document that has editable form fields a user can fill out. Typically, parts of the document are static and can’t be changed in a PDF form. These usually include questions and instructions for those who end up filling out the form later on. In a PDF form, the content fields a user fills out are typically open to editing and can offer a list of possible answer options or can be written in freely.

Yes. They are two entirely different document formats. While you can export from one file format to another, they are not the same. Word file formats are usually used for word processing, editing, and making changes to text. PDF documents on the other hand, are most often utilized for viewing, sharing, and printing documents. Additionally, Word files can be read and/or written to and contain some version of the “.doc” file format. Whereas PDF files are typically read-only and contain the “.pdf” file format.

Yes. If you have a PDF document that you do not want anyone else to be able to edit, you can protect the file. You can do this by opening the file in Acrobat, clicking Tools > Protect. Then you have a few options as to whether you want to just restrict editing with a password, or if you want to encrypt the file for further safety. Once you choose how you want to protect the PDF document, you can set a password and save.

Yes, many free PDF editors such as our top pick PDF Candy, allow you to merge two or more PDFs into one. As most free PDF editors are browser-based, you will just need to open up the PDF editor application or website in your browser and click the “Merge” option. It will then ask you to add the files of all PDFs you wish to merge. Once the files have been added, just make sure that they are in the correct position and alignment you want before proceeding with the merge. Afterwards, all of your previously PDF files will be merged together into one new PDF document.