10 Best PDF Editor Software in 2023

PDF is one of the safest file formats to share and create word documents. It allows you to send confidential documents in image format rather than easy to edit text files.

But to edit or make changes in PDF files, a special PDF editor software is required. PDF editor software will help users who frequently work with digital contracts and scanned documents. This software allows you to sign, make changes and edit PDF files with ease.

Due to the popularity of PDF file formats, there are several PDF editor options available today. Therefore, we thought to review all the best PDF editors that you can use. So, let’s dig in.

10 Best PDF Editor Software to Use in 2023

To select the best PDF editor, we have reviewed the software based on the following features – password protection, editing features, option to create new PDFs, and affordability. Here are the top 10 PDF software:

1. PDFelement

Software Rating: 4.9/5

Compatible OS: Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android

Popularity: High

Free Demo or Version: Yes

Price: Starting at $29 per quarter

PDFelement is one of the best PDF editors with an army of editing features such as digital signatures, form processing, OCR, annotations, and more. This PDF software comes with an automatic form recognition option to create and edit forms with a click. There is also Optical Character Recognition technology to read and edit the text within images like scanned documents. PDFelement also offers a PDF converter to easily convert files into different formats.

Editable Features

• Ability to edit PDF files in multiple ways like add annotates, sign, share, and more.
• Allows you to share, annotate and review documents with Document Cloud.
• It can edit PDF images using crop, extract, overturn, rotate, and many other features.
• The Align properties features let you align multiple objectives on each side.
• Easy to organize multiple PDF pages with PDFelements.

Pros

• Intuitive interface.
• Fast and simple.
• Supports 20+ languages.
• OCR technology.

Cons

• The free version has limited features.

2. Adobe Acrobat

Software Rating: 4.9/5

Compatible OS: Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android

Popularity: High

Free Demo or Version: Yes

Price: Starting at $14.99

Adobe Acrobat is the highly compatible PDF editor software as it belongs to the Adobe family. This program lets you create and edit PDF documents on any device. It can even help to sign and track PDF files. With this tool, you can share PDFs and gather comments to make remote work seamlessly. Overall, Adobe Acrobat Pro DC offers excellent mobile support to edit your PDFs on the go.

Editable Features

• The Action Wizard helps to create and customize actions for PDFs to save time.
• Ability to convert your PDF documents to PDF/X, PDF/E, or PDF/An.
• It can create, share and track PDFs progress in no time.
• Powerful mobile app version to edit PDFs anytime and anywhere.
• Integration with other Adobe family products.

Pros

• Easy to use.
• Cloud support.
• Offers OCR technology to edit.
• Save time.

Cons

• Not suitable for large businesses.
• Expensive for small businesses and individuals.

3. ABBYY FineReader PDF

Software Rating: 4.8/5

Compatible OS: Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android

Popularity: High

Free Demo or Version: Yes

Price: Starting at $199 one time payment

ABBYY FineReader PDF is yet another OCR-powered PDF editor. This software uses AI-based OCR technology that can convert, share, edit and collaborate all the documents. It is a good tool for large corporate organizations to deploy one PDF solution in the entire company to compare and digitize documents. This PDF program can edit 12 popular file formats, including Word, Excel, and others.

Editable Features

• It can digitize a copy of any printed or handwritten paper to JPEG format.
• Quickly extract text from scans to edit and share.
• It can save PDFs to your preferred cloud storage space, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, and more.
• The Smart Gallery can automatically categorize documents to A4, books, business cards, and more.
• It can create, enhance and edit separate or multiple images with a click.

Pros

• Powerful scanner.
• It can edit and convert PDFs.
• Excellent document comparison.

Cons

• Limited features with a free trial.
• Doesn’t show a documented history.

4. Nitro Pro

Software Rating: 4.7/5

Compatible OS: Windows

Popularity: High

Free Demo or Version: Yes

Price: Starting at $159

Nitro Pro is the best PDF editor software to create, sign, edit, and share PDFs. It can convert PowerPoint, Word, and Excel files to editable PDF formats with ease. Additionally, you can also generate authentic and secure electronic signatures with real-time notifications. Further, you can create and edit PDFs from any handwritten scanned documents with the advanced OCR technology.

Editable Features

• Nitro PDF Pro allows large enterprises to deploy consistent PDF document policies.
• You can sign legally binding PDF documents with unlimited eSigning.
• Nitro Analytics can provide real-time insights to boost your ROU.
• Easy to control and manage PDFs with intuitive admin controls.

Pros

• Excellent customer support.
• Easy to use.
• Dynamic analytics.
• Good for large teams.

Cons

• The free version has no great features.
• It only works on Windows devices.

5. Foxit PhantomPDF Editor

Software Rating: 4.6/5

Compatible OS: Windows and macOS

Popularity: High

Free Demo or Version: Yes

Price: Starting at $16.99

Foxit PhantomPDF Editor is a simple PDF editor software to create and edit PDFs. It can also add watermarks, headers or footers, sort pages, and export PDFs. This software can turn your paper-based documents into editable digital PDFs using the robust OCR technology. The program also allows authors to update, merge, split and convert PDFs without any help. With clean features, it is a nice PDF tool.

Editable Features

• Legally binding eSign abilities to seamlessly create, sign and collaborate on a document.
• It can reflow text across paragraphs, change document layout, adjust text size or spacing.
• Smooth integration with leading content management systems, cloud storage, and other data sharing services.
• Export PDF documents to Word, Excel, RTF, HTML, or other image formats.
• It can create PDF, PDF/X, PDF/X, and PDF/A. 

Pros

• Convert web pages to PDF.
• Stunning user interface.
• Phenomenal PDF editing tools.

Cons

• It can’t be installed on multiple devices.
• Complex for new users.

6. PDF Candy

Software Rating: 4.6/5

Compatible OS: Windows and Web

Popularity: Moderate

Free Demo or Version: Yes

Price: Starting at $6 per month

PDF Candy is a powerful yet free file conversion and editing tool with advanced OCR technology. It can scan handwritten and images for editing the text. There are over 44 tools available to create or convert PDF files. It is also easy to rearrange or organize pages, add watermarks, edit metadata, split, merge and protect with passcodes. It is a feature-rich and powerful free PDF editor.

Editable Features

• It can queue documents to download and upload in bulk.
• PDF Candy can easily merge, compress and convert PDF to Word, Excel, JPG, and others file formats.
• You can systematically rearrange pages with this tool.
• It helps to edit metadata to quickly search PDF files.
• Ability to password lock and unlock PDF documents.

Pros

• OCR technology.
• Solid layout tools.
• Excellent editing features.

Cons

• Limited text editing features.

7. PDFescape

Software Rating: 4.5/5

Compatible OS: Windows

Popularity: Moderate

Free Demo or Version: Yes

Price: $2.99 per month

PDFescape is a Windows PDF editing software that is forever available for free. Users can upgrade to the Premium or Ultimate plans to enjoy advanced PDF editing features. This software makes it easy to change the text and images in your PDF file. You can also change fonts, colors, highlights, and cross out text with this tool. There are also markup tools available for freehand drawing and adding sticky notes to your PDF documents.

Editable Features

• Give a professional look to your PDF documents using bookmarks, hyperlinks, stamps, watermarks, or letterheads.
• Allows users to merge, crop, rotate, comment, or delete extra PDF pages.
• The tool can convert PDF files to Word, Excel, HTML, or other image formats.
• PDFescape can help to sign documents with a click of your mouse.
• Provides 256-bit encryption to password protect your PDFs.

Pros

• Highly secure.
• Easy to use.
• Forever free.

Cons

• Only available for Windows users.
• The free version has basic features.

8. PDF Expert

Software Rating: 4.4/5

Compatible OS: macOS

Popularity: Moderate

Free Demo or Version: Yes

Price: Starting at $80

PDF Expert is a powerful PDF editor tool for Mac users. This software has a clean interface that allows you to easily make modifications to text in existing PDF documents. You can easily remove and replace images, add a new text or update the existing text with PDF Expert. This software also has OCR capabilities that empower you to edit text on scanned documents and annotates.

Editable Features

• PDF Expert can compare over 100-page contracts with a fast search and scrolling.
• Provides a better reading experience with advanced settings like Pick Day, Sepia, or Night mode.
• Quickly find things with search indexing and save relevant discoveries into search history to access them.
• Add notes to documents using Apple Pencil on your iPad Pro.
• It can write, edit, add images and links to PDF documents with a click.

Pros

• Clean interface.
• Easy to use.
• Ability to hide editing tools for a good reading experience.

Cons

• Can’t process large files.
• Only available for Mac users.

9. Sejda PDF Desktop Pro

Software Rating: 4.4/5

Compatible OS: Windows and macOS

Popularity: Low

Free Demo or Version: Yes

Price: $63 per year

Sejda PDF Desktop Pro is a web-based PDF editing solution that can work on both Windows and Mac computers. It is a smooth and attractive solution to manage PDF documents. You can get a free version of the software with limited features to perform regular PDF editing functions. However, the software has no OCR technology, so you can edit scanned PDF files. You can only edit PDF files that have selectable text.

Editable Features

• It can combine and reorder pages to create multiple-page PDF files.
• It can also split pages to extract the exact information.
• Sejda PDF Desktop Pro can convert PDF files to Excel, Word, and other image formats.
• The software can reduce the PDF file size to better optimize images and other resources.
• Ability to change font type, color, style, and size.

Pros

• Add images and annotates.
• Compress PDFs.
• Excellent PDF editing features.

Cons

• No OCR technology support.
• Very limited features.

10. PDFpenPro 11

Software Rating: 4.1/5

Compatible OS: macOS

Popularity: Low

Free Demo or Version: Yes

Price: Starting at $129

PDFpenPro 11 is yet another amazing PDF editor software for Mac users. It is a highly affordable and solid PDF editor with an excellent OCR engine. This software can change text, replace images, and create or edit forms in PDF formats. The software works with large documents over 400 pages to recognize text seamlessly. It can also automatically detect whether the image is scanned or contains selectable text elements.

Editable Features

• Option to set the preferred Zoom level.
• Easily hide or view font bars.
• Ability to ádd multiple items to the Library.
• Allows you to create multiple form fields at one time.

Pros

• Import scans from Continuity Camera.
• Excellent OCR engine.
• Customize page-number locations.

Cons

• Only Mac PDF editor.

Let’s Edit PDFs!

If you often work on PDF documents, it is important for you to have good PDF editing software by your side. To make your document more secure and easy to share, PDF is a great format.

Therefore, you should select the best PDF editing software from our top 10 list and quickly edit PDFs.

Meanwhile, don’t forget to check out other top 10 reviews on this site. We have many more great reviews coming your way, so stay tuned.