Best Free Adobe Acrobat Alternatives for PDFs

PDFgear is the closest free match to paid Acrobat. Its site calls it completely free and says you can use it without signing up. The Android listing goes further: free use of all functions, with no trial watermark and no page count limit.

The phone apps edit existing text and images, highlight and draw, reorganise and split pages, compress files, and convert PDFs to and from Word, Excel, PowerPoint and images. PDFgear also bills itself as an AI-powered PDF tool, with a chat feature for asking questions about a PDF.

What you lose vs Acrobat: Adobe's cloud signing workflows and enterprise admin tools.

Edge is the default PDF app on Windows, so there is nothing to install. Microsoft says you can highlight, mark up and add text to a PDF, then save your changes. You can add text to blank areas, which covers most simple forms, and search the file or jump through its table of contents.

Edge can also translate selected text into more than 70 languages and summarise a PDF with Copilot. Microsoft notes that features vary by device, market and browser version.

What you lose vs Acrobat: real text editing, page tools, merging and conversion.

Preview on the Mac does more than most people expect. Apple's guide lists annotating, filling out and signing forms, combining PDFs, adding, deleting and moving pages, reducing file size and adding a password. Preview is also on iPhone now, where it can fill out PDF forms and add a signature or text box.

What it cannot do is change the existing text in a PDF. Apple's guide covers marking text up (highlight, underline, strike out), not rewriting it.

What you lose vs Acrobat: text editing, OCR and conversion to Word.

PDF24 is a big set of PDF tools that its makers say is 100% free with no artificial limits. Ads on the website pay for it. The online tools run in any browser, and PDF24 Creator is a Windows app that works offline, so your files stay on your PC.

You get Edit PDF, Merge, Compress, Sign and OCR (which turns scanned pages into searchable text), plus dozens of converters. There is also a Chrome extension.

What you lose vs Acrobat: a polished, single-window editor. PDF24 is a collection of separate tools.

Foxit PDF Reader is a straight swap for Acrobat Reader. Foxit lists it as free on Windows, macOS, iOS and Android. It reads and prints PDFs, adds highlights, sticky notes and file attachments, fills standard and XFA forms, and signs documents by hand or with an eSignature. It can also verify digital signatures.

Editing, creating and converting PDFs sits in Foxit PDF Editor, a paid product with a 14-day free trial. On phones the app is listed as Foxit PDF Editor, with in-app purchases for the paid tools.

What you lose vs Acrobat: text editing and conversion unless you pay.

Xodo is a well-known PDF reader for phones and tablets. The app reads, highlights, draws, fills forms, scans paper into PDFs and signs documents. The Play listing shows no ads, with in-app purchases.

Xodo's own support page says viewing and annotating stay free for personal use. Bulk conversion, redaction, merging and the form builder are paid. Xodo's web tools give everyone 1 free action per day. After that, Xodo Web costs $7.99 a month or $95.88 a year.

What you lose vs Acrobat: most conversion and page tools unless you pay.

iLovePDF is the fastest way to do one PDF job in a browser. The free plan covers the essential tools, with a cap on files and size per task. Merge takes up to 25 files (100 MB), compress takes 2 files (200 MB), and Edit PDF takes 1 file (100 MB).

The pricing page lists the free plan as web only. Desktop and mobile apps, unlimited tasks and every tool come with Premium, which costs $5 a month billed yearly or $9 month to month.

What you lose vs Acrobat: offline use and big batches on the free plan.

LibreOffice is a free, open source office suite, and its Draw app can open a PDF and turn the page contents into editable objects. You fix a line of text or swap an image, then export a new PDF with File, Export as PDF.

It works best on simple, text-based PDFs. Scanned pages are images, so there is no text to edit, and complex layouts can shift when Draw imports them. If you already use LibreOffice for documents, see our list of Microsoft Office alternatives.

What you lose vs Acrobat: reliable layout on complex files, OCR and form tools.

Okular is KDE's document viewer. It opens PDFs, EPUB books, comic archives, images and Markdown. You can add inline and pop-up notes, highlight and underline text, and add your own text. It can also verify digital signatures and sign PDFs.

On Linux it is in most distributions' app stores and on Flathub. On Windows, KDE recommends the Microsoft Store version. Mac builds exist only as untested nightly builds.

What you lose vs Acrobat: editing, page tools and conversion.