1. Best overall
2. Best online
3. Best for Android & iOS
4. Best for signatures
5. Best for designers
6. Best for Mac
7. Best for minor edits
8. Best for data security
FAQs
How to choose
How we test
The best free PDF editors let you create, edit, and work together on files without any subscription fees or one-off payments.
We all know how important PDF files are. They literally keep millions of businesses on the same page. The best PDF editors we've tried - yes, even free versions - let you create and design seriously professional documents. There are limitations, and few free PDF editing software is as feature-packed as the likes of Adobe Acrobat. But add in e-signatures, forms, and enhanced security tools, and you do have some of the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives without any subscriptions or lifetime licenses.
Our team of PDF experts have been hand-testing the top-rated apps and platforms to find out which is really the best. Here's what we learned and why we recommend using these apps and platforms online, on desktop, and on mobile. As part of our review process, we’ve tested out each free PDF app’s integrated tools, filetype support, collaboration and cloud storage facilities. Optional pricing upgrades are always noted, but every apps and platforms we tried here offers a completely free PDF editor.
Top 3 editor's picks
You may have to pay for these, but they're some the top PDF software we've tried.
What's the best free PDF editors in 2023?
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Best free PDF editor overall
PDF24 Creator is our pick for best free PDF editor overall. You may find the website a tad dated, but the tool is surprisingly feature-rich.
The free PDF editor is a very small program that can easily run on older systems - ideal, then, for businesses with limited resources or a suite of low-spec computers.
When we tested the software, we rated it as one of the best free tools, going above and beyond what's expected. It’s full of features, and has everything needed to create and edit PDF documents. While we noted that it lacked more advanced features usually found in premium tools like Adobe Acrobat DC, we felt that most users will find more than enough utility within PDF24 Creator.
The Windows-only tool serves up a PDF editor for free document creation, PDF merging, PDF compressing, and converting PDFs into other formats. You can even optimize a PDF for the web or apply OCR to a PDF, so that you can convert scanned images to text.
PDF24 Creator has a minimalistic user interface and it’s clear that the program is designed around speed first and foremost. The interface can feel a little clunky at times, but all of the important features are easy to find and when you first open the software, you’re presented with a grid of editing options. And yes, our top choice for best free PDF editor is genuinely free and unlimited, through and through.
Read our full PDF24 Creator review
Best free PDF editor online
PDF Candy is ideal if you want a free online PDF editor and a way to edit PDF files in your browser. You’ll also find a desktop version available for Windows if you upgrade to the lifetime license.
Easily one of the best free PDF editors online, it's delightfully simple to use - everything is clean, clear, and easy to navigate. And it's absolutely packed with functionality, with an impressive 47 different tools for editing, altering, converting PDF files, and so much more. During our tests, we found PDF editing as effortless every other function in the software, delighted that "editing text in a PDF file isn’t a million miles away from editing a word processor document."
The free version places a one-task-per-hour limit - e.g., processing an edited PDF file or converting a document. This can be removed by setting up a monthly or annual subscription, or purchasing it outright for a one-off payment. The latter also grants access to the Windows-only desktop PDF editor app. If restriction is too much to bear, and you don't need everything the platform offers, try PDF24 Creator - it's fully free across the board.
Elsewhere, PDF Candy has a good amount of useful tools and features. This includes the option to edit PDF files online, convert documents to a variety of formats, merge and compress PDFs.
On top of that, PDF Candy lets you easily extract text and images, resize pages, and add watermarks. In total, there are an impressive 47 different tools to help you manage and edit PDF files. All features are found in a handy list of buttons, so you won't spend ages looking for what you need. Overall, we found service delightfully simple, but as with even the best free PDF editors, an upgrade unlocks its full potential.
Read our full PDF Candy review
Best free PDF editor for Android and iPhone
Smallpdf was created with a single goal in mind: edit and compress PDFs.
But what sets it apart from the competition is its extensive multi-lingual support, available in 24 different languages and used in 195 countries around the world.
Long considered one of the best free PDF editors online - you can make all the changes you need from your browser - the user experience is excellent and incredibly easy to use. When we tested Smallpdf, we found the lightweight, cloud-based tool perfect for simple tasks, but not ideal for high-volume editing or advanced features.
We found using the PDF editor very straightforward. Upload your PDF via the website, and begin making annotations and taking notes. We also liked the option to add pictures, text and shapes to a PDF. Once the necessary changes are made, Smallpdf gave us the option to compress a PDF or export it as a Word, Excel or PowerPoint file.
There are restrictions, as you'll find in many of the best free PDF editors. Chiefly, you're locked to two tasks per day - so a fully free tool like PDF24 Creator or Canva might be a better choice for more consistent use.
If you want even more functionality, you can upgrade to Smallpdf’s premium edition. While the web version is slightly cheaper, you can pay a bit more to take advantage of the desktop version so you can work offline. Alongside a web PDF editor and Windows desktop app, users can also install the PDF editor on Android and iOS phones.
Read our full Smallpdf review
Best free PDF editor for signatures
If you’re looking for a free PDF editor with signing capabilities, DocHub is worth considering. When we went hands-on with the software, we described it as “a true gem, delivering comprehensive functionality without burdening users with unnecessary expenses.”
The free plan has limits, but it’s relatively generous if you’re only a casual user. You’re allowed 2,000 documents, five eSignatures, three sign requests, and three email attachments per day. The pro plan, which costs $10 per user per month, lifts these restrictions for unlimited document editing. Subscribing also adds a handful of features and tools, like a wide font library and the ability to add drop-down menus to PDFs.
During our time with DocHub, we found it intuitive and easy to navigate, with a good line in security for businesses. You’ll find an excellent page manager, where you can rearrange, label, rotate, add, or delete pages - just right click for all the options. And field creation was equally wide-ranging, letting you add extras like text boxes and legally binding signatures. Sharing and collaboration tools, ensuring you get documents signed by others, are also plentiful.
But it’s not as feature-filled as dedicated PDF editors, and on the free plan, you’ll only have access to three basic fonts - Courier New, Times New Roman, Helvetica. But for getting your documents signed, it's absolutely up to job.
Read our full DocHub review
Best free PDF editor for designers
Canva’s free PDF editor is a good choice if you’re looking to create documents from scratch or re-edit an existing file.
Like the platform’s design app and logo maker, the browser-based editor is pure child’s play. If you’re familiar with Canva’s other free tools, you won’t find any surprises here. And if you’ve never made or edited a PDF document before, it won’t take long to master the tools and build professional-looking assets. Select an element, drag it into position, and that’s that. It offers a decent amount of customization. You’ll also find it packed with stock images and vector graphics that can be added to your file.
When we reviewed Canva - one of the best free PDF editors with design capabilities - we were especially impressed with its ability to turn existing PDFs into editable documents. Upload your file and the tool smartly identifies the different elements on the page - text boxes, images, background colors, that sort of thing. You’re then free to click and modify (or delete) any of these.
There is also an app library for added utility. This is where you can connect your cloud storage services, add links, and even create QR codes. This is all free to use, but there is a monthly/annual subscription available, adding business-focused utilities such as brand kits, more cloud storage, premium graphics, and social media scheduling. Subscribers gain access to these across the Canva platform; it’s not limited to the PDF editing tool.
Effortless is, perhaps, the best way to describe this top free PDF editor. But while the tool excels on the design side, it lacks many of the advanced features you’ll find in full-fat software like Adobe Acrobat. There’s no OCR, for example, and no eSign integration. That makes it best for teams and marketing departments largely focused on designing their own PDF assets.
Read our full Canva PDF Editor review
Best free PDF editor for Mac
Apple’s Preview app is free, and as you’d imagine, only available on Apple devices like the MacBook. It’s designed to let you preview many different image formats, but its most interesting feature is its ability to view, interact with, and manipulate PDFs.
After testing our choice for best free PDF editor for Mac, we concluded that Apple’s product was a remarkably powerful editor, allowing you to perform what could be considered advanced content manipulation and note taking tools.
The basics are seamless: open a file, scroll through the pages, search for specific words, print the whole document, or just parts of it, fill in specific fields, add notes, it’s all there, and you can’t really ask for an easier-to-use PDF reader.
But Preview goes one better: you can manipulate PDFs files to a certain extent. There's no text editing, but you can reorder pages, rotate them, and even delete them.
On the downside, despite being one of the best free PDF editors on the market, it lacks OCR tools. But most other functions should cater for most users. For custom PDF creation, you have the option of copying and pasting pages into new documents - as long as those original PDFs allow you to copy their pages.
Read our full Apple Preview review
Best free PDF editor for minor edits
I Love PDF is an online service that allows you to manipulate PDF files in a number of ways. You can merge files together, split a single one into multiples, and convert documents to and from the PDF format. The only thing you can't do is alter the original content of a PDF, although you can add additional text boxes, images and shapes.
So, it’s not a full PDF editor like Adobe Acrobat DC. In fact, we noted in our review of the PDF editing tool that while it lets you manipulate documents in many ways, the drawback is that you can’t actually change the existing content of these files. You can only add extra text boxes, shapes, images, and the like.
Despite this, it does contain a number of interesting features that are cleverly implemented. This includes being able to use your phone’s camera to scan pages, and have them appear back on your page on your computer, once done. You can easily add page numbers to every page, or even a watermark, and of course add a digital electronic signature to a document.
The online PDF editor is free, as long as you access it from a web browser. A handful of tools have limited functionality in this way, but should be suitable for most people’s needs.
If you require more advanced features like OCR and offline PDF editing , then you’ll need to consider subscribing.
Read our full I Love PDF review
Best free PDF editor for data security
