As its name suggests, Soda PDF Online is an online PDF editor available for any device and ready to let users edit, alter, manipulate, and otherwise personalize PDF files. We've long been fans of Soda PDF, which has consistently ranked among the best PDF editors we've tested. We put the latest version to the test, to see if it still deserves a download.

Soda PDF Online: Pricing

• Simple subscription options

Like almost all of the best PDF editors we've tested, this one is a subscription-only service. The plans have been expanded upon since last we looked at it, and it now features three different tiers: Standard, Pro, and Business.

Standard gets you the basic tools, such as View, Convert, and Edit. These will allow you to perform many actions, including altering the original text of a PDF, adding images and additional content, splitting PDFs, merging them, and such like. All of this for $12.59 / £10 a month.

The best tools are kept for Pro. These include OCR search, eSign and forms capabilities, adding comments, the ability to secure PDFs, and batch processing. This plan will set you back $15.10 / £12 a month.

Finally, Business expands upon Pro by allowing you to edit any OCR document, introduces phone support, as well as Windows, Mac and Linux deployment, for $20.14 / £16 a month.

Annual subscriptions are also available. In our experience, these prices feel middle of the road for such tools. There are cheaper alternatives, like EaseUS, and more expensive ones, such as Foxit. 

You can also try the service out for free by clicking here, to see if it’s right for you. 

• Pricing: 3.5/5

Soda PDF Online: Interface

• Clean, versatile, you choose the way you want to work.

As soon as you begin a free trial from the homepage, you’ll be instantly immersed in the interface. No request for contact details, no demands for your credit card info. That’s definitely a huge plus.

The UI doesn’t give you much to work with as long as you haven’t opened a document. You can do so by clicking on the blue ‘Upload File’ button, top right of the interface. From there you have access to your computer’s file system, as well as your Dropbox and OneDrive accounts. Note that you can only upload one document at a time, which could be frustrating if you have a lot of work to do.

A sidebar on the left offers you three choices: access to all the files you’ve uploaded to Soda PDF, the Edit section (selected by default once a document has been opened), and Translate, which lets you translate a file into one of seven languages, including Russian, Spanish and French.

We’re not experts in most languages, but we did check out the results of translating an English document into French and it was, for the most part, perfectly acceptable. More than good enough to get the gist of the content. Plus it’s as easy to edit the results as it is to modify the original document. Soda PDF also automatically creates a new document for your translation, making sure the original is never affected by such an action.

Taking a look at the ‘Edit’ section, you’ll find all the tools you’re after in a toolbar at the top. Clicking on some activates a drop down menu to reveal additional options. Everything you need is there, from adding new text boxes or images, freehand drawing on the page, adding various shapes, creating forms, performing an OCR pass, organising your document (such as rotating, duplicating or deleting pages), as well as cropping, compressing, merging and converting a file.

Top right of the interface is an AI assistant, and an export feature which lets you download, email, or print your PDF, and at the very top you have zooming in and out buttons, a search field, and undo and redo buttons, among others.

• Interface: 5/5

Soda PDF Online: Tools

• A large selection of tools, easy to access and use

Using any of the tools described above is as easy as clicking on it and then clicking somewhere on the page to apply it. You then have complete editorial control over this new object. But that’s not all. You might’ve noticed there aren’t any obvious tools to edit a PDF’s existing content. But that’s because you don’t need any: simply double-click on a paragraph to give you the ability to alter it at will. Not only that, you can even resize and reposition the text box.

We didn’t have as much success with images that had a URL embedded in them. If we were to click on them, we’d be taken to the webpage in question rather than being able to edit the image itself. Basic images with no such link, were just as easy to resize and reposition as the text we worked on above.

Soda PDF Online also lets you design forms that can be filled in by others, and you have many tools at your disposal to merge multiple documents into one, insert or extract pages, replace them or move them around.

And of course, you’re able to create a PDF document from scratch, either starting with a blank page, converting an existing document into a PDF, or even based on data saved in your computer’s clipboard.

If you’re looking for tools that don’t appear within this interface, go back to Soda PDF’s main page, click on ‘More Tools’ at the top, and ‘View all tools’. You’ll be graced with a long list of features, including, among others, the ability to convert HTML to PDF. Now, Macs have a system-wide feature that allows them to do this straight out of the box of course, but PC users will appreciate this very well-implemented feature. We tried it on a variety of web sites, even pages that competing services struggled with, and Soda PDF’s results were most impressive.

And finally, we thought we’d take a quick look at Soda PDF’s AI tools - yes, AI’s got to Soda too. Click on ‘AI Assistant’ to analyse your documents. After which you’ll be offered a series of questions based on its content. Think on it as a quick summarisation tool. And you’re not limited to the questions the AI came up with: you’re also able to ask your own.

• Tools: 4.5/5

Should I buy...?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Alternatives

PDF Candy is an online PDF editor that offers a wealth of tools to - you guessed it - edit PDFs online for free (with some limits - see below). And by ‘wealth’, we mean an impressive 49 tools, including editing, merging, compressing, rearranging, and protecting files. The service is delightfully simple to use, although as with most free PDF editing tools, an upgrade is needed to unlock its full potential.

How does the latest version of this online tool compare to the best PDF editor and best free PDF editor software out there? We put it to the test.

PDF Candy: Pricing & plans

• Fair, free, with flexible payment upgrades

Users can freely access the tools via the browser PDF Candy Web - and there’s no restriction to which tools you can use - although you can only perform one task an hour, making the free version ideal for minimal or irregular PDF editing (or sloths). At least it's more generous than SmallPDF's one-task-per-day restriction.

Should you attempt to perform another task within the hour, a handy, if somewhat threatening, red countdown timer tells you how long you’ll have to wait.

Removing this time-lock requires a monthly or annual subscription - doing so also increases file size limits, too.

The lifetime license - a one-off payment - opens up PDF Candy, as well as offering a desktop PDF editor download free for Windows.

You can also get a yearly subscription for both the web and desktop versions for $4 a month (it’s advertised as usually being $18 monthly). If you’d rather not be tied down to a yearly contract, you can use the web version for $6 a month. Alternatively, you can purchase a perpetual licence for both the web and desktop versions for $99, which is slightly more than subscribing for 2 years.

• Pricing: 4/5

PDF Candy: Interface & experience

• PDF Candy could not be simpler to use

Using PDF Candy is child’s play. Literally. The ability to grasp a mouse and discern an icon is all that’s needed to get started.

When you first hit the homepage, you’ll find a bold ‘action’ button to add files from your desktop, or use third-party cloud storage services, Dropbox and Google Drive. Depending on the tool you use, this will slightly vary, but layout and workflow remains largely the same.

Dragging files onto the action button offers you a choice of the six most popular tools: convert a PDF, Compress it, Edit it, Merge it with others, Split it, or Delete pages. If those aren’t what you’re after, beneath that action button is the full list of tools offered by PDF Candy - including rearrange pages, and image and office doc conversion to PDF. Icons are big, bold, streamlined and uniquely identifiable in design - so you can generally find what you need if you know what you’re looking for.

If there’s a flaw here, it’s the lack of categorization. There’s no clear basis for their default order - it’s not alphabetical, for example. The first 14 are the ‘popular’ tools, and the rest seem to have been ordered by the designer’s preference.

There’s a search field at the top of the page which can help you find a tool quickly, and it’s also possible to ‘favorite’ a tool, which will make it appear first in the ‘popular’ or ‘other’ list after a page refresh.

That strong, simple interface extends once you dive into any of the tools. PDF Candy never leaves you in doubt as to what to do and what to expect.

• Interface & experience: 5/5

PDF Candy: Editing

• As easy as using a word processor

Editing PDF files online is as effortless as every other function in PDF Candy. Key tools run along a left sidebar, and, as with elsewhere, the icons leave you in no doubt what each button does.

Editing text in a PDF file isn’t a million miles away from editing a word processor document. Open up the PDF editor, highlight a word, line, or paragraph, then you’re free to replace it with your own content.

Alternatively, by clicking anywhere in the document, you can begin writing in the text box, before dragging it into position. You’ll also gain a handful of controls over the appearance, but it’s fairly lacking. You can’t even change the typeface, although you have the basics, such as bolding, italicising, resizing, and a choice of 10 colors.

Whiteout is a useful tool for hiding sensitive data from a PDF file - although, once exported, you might be unpleasantly surprised to realise you can still select this hidden text. It’s a great tool when printing out a document, but not when sharing it digitally. It you need proper redaction, where compliance weighs heavy on your mind, we still prefer Foxit PDF Editor.

The included eSign software works very well, offering three options for adding signatures to documents: via text, image upload, or drawing it with your mouse. And you only need to create this once. Your signature will then be saved, to be used across other documents (and you can add more if required).

• Editing: 4/5

PDF Candy: Conversion

• Packs an incredible 34 PDF conversion tools

PDF Candy boasts the ability to convert documents in just one click. And in our experience, the platform delivers on this promise. The only (admittedly optional) exception is when converting images to PDF and vice versa, where you can also select the image quality.

After waiting 15 seconds for the tool to process the document, a rapid-fire conversion takes place. Once converted, you can download or immediately open the document into another tool to make further alterations, such as merging PDFs or compressing PDF files.

But the real draw here is the sheer number of PDF converter options. There are 34 ‘convert to PDF’ tools, including Word to PDF, Excel to PDF, and PowerPoint to PDF. There's even an option for Pages, the Apple format, although this feels somewhat superfluous as converting any file format to PDF has been baked into the Mac since the launch of macOS X, all the way back in 2001. There are also options for converting images and popular eReader formats to PDF.

On the flip side, ‘convert from PDF’ has 17 tools, such as PDF to Word, PDF to JPG, and PDF to Excel. If you find yourself regularly converting to and from PDF, you'll find a lot of utility in PDF Candy.

• Conversion: 5/5

PDF Candy: Extra features

• Loaded with bonus tools you didn't know you need

So, PDF Candy nails down the basics. Here’s a platform that offers everything most PDF users will need to get the job done. But it doesn’t end there.

Beyond editing, converting, and otherwise altering pages, the free online PDF editor also features the ability to encrypt and password-protect files, edit a document’s metadata, and add watermarks to PDF files. And, as expected by this point, everything is equally easy to use.

PDF OCR was startlingly accurate - ‘reading’ text in a PDF and exporting it to a .TXT file. The formatting may not match what’s on the page, but the content itself was precise. Depending on the amount of ‘unreadable’ images you have in the document, wait times will vary.

Also available are Image Candy and Video Candy, the company’s free online image editor and video editor respectively. Like PDF Candy, these editors have a good selection of tools, such as removing backgrounds, watermarking images, and even generating memes, on the image side of things, or changing speed, adding music or even creating a slideshow, with the video editor. Using them is just as easy as its document management suite.

• Extra features: 5/5

PDF Candy: Scorecard

Should I buy?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Alternatives

Editor's note

• Original review date: November 2024
• Issues with editing PDF content and line-spacing now fixed
• Prices have risen

Update - November 2025: In re-reviewing Nitro PDF, the latest version addresses one of the biggest issues we had with this software.

Originally, we were underwhelmed by the software's ability to seamlessly edit the content on an original PDF document. We even made a point of mentioning the issue with line spacing when altering the text. We're happy to report that's now been fixed (and we've removed it from the list of Cons above). Editing PDFs now feels much more consistent and intuitive.

Elsewhere, the feature-set and workflow remain the same. But there is one more big change: the price. And it's not an insignificant increase, either. Bumping the monthly cost from $11.24 to $15 is a hefty hike (jumping from $135 a year to a whopping $180), which sends this software to the top end of its market. Ouch.

Original review follows.

Nitro PDF Pro - now there’s a name that packs a powerful punch. The PDF editor is positioned as an essential tool for small businesses and individuals, and includes a mass of must-have features, like PDF conversions, eSignatures, OCR. Ideal, then, for improving workflow efficiencies and productivity within a single tool.

Available for Windows and Mac, there’s also a version of the PDF editor app for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. But how does the latest version measure up to the best PDF editor software we've used? We put it to the test.

Nitro PDF Pro 14: Pricing & plans

• One-time purchase with volume licensing available

There’s been a few changes since the release of version 14 of Nitro PDF Pro, not least of which is its pricing structure. Don’t worry: if you’re not a fan of subscription services (you know you’re in trouble when car manufacturers are starting to get in on the act), and that aversion is driving you to find the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives: this multi-platform PDF editor can still be purchased outright for the one-off fee of $180.

Yes, that’s not cheap, and you have to pay for every device you want to use this software on. Whether you need a PDF editor for Mac or Windows, the price per licence is the same. It's a far cry from the best free PDF editors available, for sure.

However, you now also have the option of subscribing to the service for $11.24 per user, per month. This ends up being roughly $135 for the year for each person.

Whichever path you wish to take, you’re offered a 14-day free trial, no credit card required (although you do need to set up a free account and give Nitro a valid email address, which has been pretty much de rigueur for most online services for a while now). So hop on over to www.gonitro.com, and let’s check it out.

• Pricing: 4/5

Nitro PDF Pro 14: Interface & experience

• Clean and doesn’t get in the way

Launch the software, open up an existing PDF, and Nitro PDF Pro’s interface is revealed to you.

The layout is quite clear and simple: all the tools you need are at the top, in a row of large icons showcasing the main tools, with a toolbar underneath, displaying additional ones (which are grayed out if the selected main tool doesn’t support that feature).

There’s a sidebar on the left hand side, which displays by default thumbnails of all your PDFs’ pages, but you can change that to show other useful information, such as your annotations, or any included attachments, among others.

• Interface & experience: 4/5

Nitro PDF Pro 14: Tools

• Pretty much everything you need to annotate and alter a PDF

The purpose of Nitro PDF Pro is to allow you to make alterations to PDF documents, and it comes with all the tools you might expect.

Take online collaboration, for instance. You have at your disposal many ways to leave notes on pages. There’s a highlight tool which allows you to mark text in a variety of colors. You’ll find four default shades, with the ability to create three custom ones should you so wish. You’re also able to underline, strikethrough, or add a squiggle under any part of the PDF you’re working on.

All of this is most useful, but it can be hard to convey exactly what changes you want to see with a bit of a highlighter and some lines over the text. That’s where the Annotate tools come in.

Here, various text boxes reside, from just a plain box, to a comment, a thought bubble, a note (think of it as a collapsible post-it note), and a few others. More than enough for you to populate a PDF with as many comments as you need in order to convey what you need changed to other team members.

Editing the content of an existing PDF is also possible, of course, using the ‘Correct Text’ tool. Select a word, a sentence, or multiple paragraphs, and that tool will transform your selection into a changeable text box.

We did encounter an issue with the PDFs we experimented with: turning a section into editable text affected the line spacing, often making the paragraph overlap the following one. We tried with multiple PDFs. We encountered the same problem with each of them.

Although there are many tools available to modify text, like changing its color, italicizing it, changing its alignment, etc, we couldn’t find one that altered the line spacing. There are other competing software that do a better job at preserving the look of a document, like EaseUS PDF Editor.

• Tools: 4/5

Nitro PDF Pro 14: Document creation

• Start from scratch and convert into other formats

Altering PDFs is one thing, but like so many others, Nitro PDF Pro lets you create documents from scratch, using all the tools mentioned above, and more besides. This even includes form building, something Adobe Acrobat can struggle to present. This is a useful addition as it allows you to stay within a single app when working on all things PDF.

But people don’t always work within one PDF editor app, and that’s where Nitro’s format conversion comes into its own.

Like similar PDF editing software - think Foxit PDF Editor or Readdle PDF Expert - Nitro PDF Pro can convert PDFs into other formats, and vice versa.

However, it doesn’t do this via a dedicated ‘Convert’ command. Instead, the process is a lot more intuitive: need to convert Word to PDF? Go to File > Open, locate it, and Nitro will convert it automatically for you as it opens up in the software.

Nitro PDF Pro is compatible with a wide variety of file formats, including images. When it encounters a file with no selectable text within it, it will offer to initiate the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) process. Select the language the document is in, and Nitro will get to work. We found the results very acceptable, and of course, they are editable.

Should you need to convert a PDF into a different format, just go to File > Export. You have a few options at your disposal, such as Microsoft Office files - Nitro is a easily one of the best PDF to Excel converters and PDF to PowerPoint converters on the market. There’s also RTF, TXT, a handful of image formats, and PDF/A - which is used for archival purposes.

This is not all you can do with Nitro PDF Pro of course: there are other features, which include being able to merge PDFs together from emails to text files to spreadsheets, condensing them into a single, searchable PDF), digitally eSign documents, and create tables of content.

• Document creation: 4/5

Nitro PDF Pro 14: Scorecard

Should I buy Nitro PDF Pro 14?

Buy it if...

You need a feature-rich PDF editor
Nitro PDF Pro offers you many tools you would need to edit, annotate or even create a PDF document from scratch. You can bring in documents straight from your scanner, and its OCR capabilities are excellent. If you or your business often need to alter and annotate PDF documents, it might be worth downloading the free trial version and check it out.

Don't buy it if...

You're a casual user or your needs are simple
If your needs are simpler, and you only want to browse through a PDF, then Nitro PDF Pro risks being overkill. It might also not be ideal with you like to edit the content of a PDF without altering its formatting, especially the line spacing.

Alternatives

For additional PDF editing software, we reviewed the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives you can download right now.

Editing PDFs is something you can’t easily do - most free tools just let you read the content and search for keywords. There are some services that broaden the capabilities of what you can achieve with no down payment required, and I Love PDF is one such option.  But is it still one of the best free PDF editors out there? We put it to the test. 

I Love PDF: Pricing

• A free service with added functionality for those who subscribe 

Your first point of call is I Love PDF’s website. From there you get access to its 26 online tools, displayed in a grid-like pattern, from merging PDFs, to converting to and from Microsoft Office documents, to signing and redacting files, and more besides.

You’ll find login and signup options top right of the interface, but you don’t actually need to register to start using I Love PDF.

Although the service is free, there is a subscription option of $4 / £4 per month (billed annually at $48 / £48). You’ll find that there are some restrictions with the free service compared to the subscription one, like batch processing for instance, forcing you to convert files one at a time if you’d rather not pay. 

If your needs are modest, you’ll find the free service more than sufficient. However, the option to expand your capabilities, even downloading software so you can work offline, on a PC, Mac, Android or iOS device, enable OCR software functionality, remove adverts, and gain access to customer support, can prove valuable to those who would rather subscribe. 

You can check out I Love PDF by clicking here.

• Pricing: 4/5

I Love PDF: Interface and experience

•  The interface is simple to understand and consistent throughout 

 Using I Love PDF’s available tools is pretty straightforward: you click on an icon, and add the file(s) you need to work on - whether stored on your computer or through either the Google Drive or Dropbox online storage services.

What happens next depends on your chosen tool of course: ‘Split’ for instance will display large thumbnails of the PDF’s pages on the left of the interface. You’ll find contextual options in the sidebar to the right. In this case you either get to select a range of pages, at which point I Love PDF will cut the document for you, or, more interestingly, you get to set multiple ‘Ranges’. This is where you can select any page - contiguous or not - to combine them into a separate document, or save them as individual pages.

You’ll find all tools work in that way: large icons, easy-to-understand features, and thumbnails big enough to just about make out which page you need to keep and which to discard.

Any option that isn’t available to the free service will have a yellow ‘Premium’ label next to it, making it easy to see what’s off limits.

To get out of a selected tool and return to the main menu, either select a new one from the menu bar at the top of the page, or click on the large ‘I Love PDF’ title, top left.

• Interface & experience: 5/5

I Love PDF: Tools

• Some tools are implemented in a very clever way 

Out of the usual suspects for a service of this type, there were a few implementations that we quite liked.

For instance, ‘Sign PDF’. The eSign software allows you to add a signature somewhere on a PDF page. You’re given a few options on how to do this - type your name using a script font, use your laptop’s trackpad to create a digital signature, or, and this is the part we liked, choose ‘Draw from your mobile device’. 

When you select that feature, a QR code appears. Use your phone’s camera to hover over it to reveal a URL. This takes you to a special page where you can draw your signature straight on your mobile device. Once you’re done, tap on ‘Apply’, and that squiggle will be sent back to the page you’re working on on your computer, ready to use.

This is a great blending of technologies, which works seamlessly.

This feature is also used with the ‘Scan to PDF’ tool. You might find that your phone already has the capability of scanning documents with its camera, but here, once the document is scanned, it is sent right back to your I Love PDF page on your computer, ready for you to continue working from there. It’s a great feature which we enjoyed using very much.

Another one we appreciated, although somewhat lacking the wow factor of the previous one, is ‘Page Numbers’. If you need to add them to a PDF, this is a fantastic and quick way to do so: load the PDF, and you’ll be presented with a series of thumbnails for each page. Choose where the number will be displayed on the pages, and you’re done.

Yes there are other options, such as changing the number of the first page to a value other than 1, selecting how the number is displayed, its font, style, and other options, and so on. All this is an added bonus, but if you need to number the pages of a PDF document quickly and easily, this is an ideal tool.

• Tools: 5/5

I Love PDF: PDF editing

• From adding new text boxes, to editing a PDF’s existing content, I Love PDF can do it all

I Love PDF’s ‘Edit PDF’ tool comes in two flavours: Annotate, and Edit. Annotate is part of the tools available for free, and lets you add new text boxes, images, shapes, and even draw on the PDF document you’ve uploaded. It’s a great way to make notes, but not entirely ideal if you wanted to use the service to alter the original content, like fixing a typo for instance. 

This is where ‘Edit’ comes in. Now as you can see from its yellow premium label, this one’s only available to paying customers, but I Love PDF does let you explore its features. When a PDF is created it segregates paragraphs, images, and anything else into boxes. I Love PDF lets you manipulate these, resize them, move them around and delete them. You’re even able to alter the very words that were written, and once done, download the modified document back to your computer (you definitely have to be subscribed for that last part).

For more advanced editing, we reviewed the best PDF editors and best Adobe Acrobat alternatives.

• PDF editing: 4/5

I Love PDF: Scorecard

Should I try?

Try it if...

You want to see why we rated it as one of the best free PDF readers out there. I Love PDF's interface is easy to navigate, and the capabilities on offer are often only available to paying customers with competing services. 

There is a lot of clicking around though to get from one tool to another, but the proof’s in the pudding: the tools are good, they are easy to use, and you get your modified PDF in seconds. 

Don't try it if...

You don’t like the concept of working in your browser, nor of paying a subscription to get the software you can download to your computer, and would rather just use what’s available for free elsewhere.

Alternatives

Editor's note

• Original review date: November 2024
• No major changes to features and workflow
• Still not multi-platform
• Prices the same as last year

Update - November 2025: When re-reviewing the EaseUS package, we were hoping it would see the error of its ways and make the PDF software multi-platform, like so many other apps in their portfolio. But no: it’s still PC only.

That's ok, though. It’s still as good as it was - even if it’s just for Windows users. And there have been no noticeable changes since the last time we reviewed EaseUS PDF Editor.

What was surprising was that inflation doesn’t appear to be something EaseUs believe in: the prices it charged last year are the same this year, putting the competition to shame: $50 for the year, or $19.50 on a month-by-month basis. Even the lifetime one-off cost option is the same at $80. That’s something to be congratulated.

Original review follows.

EaseUS provides a vast array of tools for both Macs and PCs from backups and data recovery to multimedia capabilities like its video editor and screen recorder. Each tool to roll out has reviewed exceptionally well on TechRadar Pro, thanks to exceptional utility and a relaxed, intuitive user experience. But how does the firm’s fare compared to the best PDF editor software available for download? We re-reviewed the latest version to find out.

EaseUS PDF Editor: Pricing and plans

• Free but limited, monthly subscriptions, and one-off lifetime purchase available

EaseUS PDF editor offers plenty to to work with, and this obviously comes at a price. But there are actually a few options available to you on that front.

You could choose to pay nothing, but you’ll only gain access to some basic tools in what might otherwise be one of the best free PDF editors, and your exported files will be watermarked. Still it’s a great way to get a feel of the software and see if it’s right for you.

Then, you’ve got a couple of subscription options: pay monthly ($20) or yearly ($50). Both unlock all features, including unlimited file conversion, 24/7 technical support, free upgrades (as long as you keep on paying), and no watermark.

It’s obvious that paying for a year is a lot cheaper, but if you plan on using this PDF editing software regularly for the foreseeable future, then the one-off price of $80 for the ‘Lifetime’ option is incredibly attractive. It’s cheaper than 2 years on subscription (4 months if you pay monthly), and the impressive cherry on top is: you also get free upgrades for life. What’s not to like?

You can check out EaseUS by clicking here.

• Score: 4/5

EaseUS PDF Editor: Getting started

• Simple interface for easily navigating to editing features

Launch the PDF editor app for the first time and you’ll be graced with a very sparse interface. Most of it is empty, save for a row of icons offering you various options at the top, along with a sidebar on the right. Click on the ‘Tools’ button there to have the currently empty homepage replaced with rows upon rows of icons showcasing the app’s multiple functionalities.

As it stands, the interface does exactly what you expect it to do: offer you what you need, when you need it, while getting out of the way as you work on your document.

Open an existing PDF and you’ll be brought instantly into the ‘Read’ mode, but check the top of the interface to activate any functionality you’re after, from ‘Comment’, ‘Edit’, ‘Protect’, ‘Convert’, and more. Click on any of them for a secondary menu to appear just beneath the first, giving you all the toolset for your selected action.

Take ‘Edit’ mode, for instance: click on any paragraph for it to be entirely selected. This bounding box mechanism works for any object currently on the page. You’re able to resize these boxes, move them around, and even delete them. With an entire paragraph selected by default, it’s incredibly easy to make changes to a PDF’s existing text. When you consider that many of the competition restrict your editing to a line by line basis, EaseUS PDF’s approach is much more flexible and user friendly.

You can insert and modify links into the body of your text, and even include headers and footers (a great place to add page numbers for instance). All in all, we found EaseUS PDF Editor’s interface to be surprisingly competent.

• Score: 4/5

EaseUS PDF Editor: Editing

• Good selection of tools to convert formats or turn images into editable text

Editing PDFs might be this software’s bread and butter, but you can do so much more with it. For one thing, you’re able to convert PDFs to Excel, PDF to Word, and PDF to PowerPoint. There are even options to convert various image formats.

In the ‘Protect’ section, you’ll find various options to secure your PDF document, such as setting up a password for it, or redacting information you’d rather not divulge, but this is also where you can set up signatures, making it easy to fill in forms and sign documents digitally.

One tool we quite liked is its OCR functionality (we reviewed the best OCR software before), although we were disappointed to see that in order for it to work, you still need to convert an image to a PDF. It’s not a difficult process and EaseUS PDF Editor does allow you to convert images, like JPG or PNG to PDF, but it feels like a totally unnecessary step.

Still, once that’s done, you’ll be offered a long list of languages to choose from (English is selected by default in our version), along with a chosen format to save the output as (Word is your default option, but you can also choose TXT, Excel, Powerpoint, and PDF). Click on ‘Recognise’ and EaseUS PDF will get to work. The process doesn’t take too long - but that would obviously depend on the length of the document and your computer’s processing power.

• Score: 5/5

EaseUS PDF Editor: Tools

• Need to trim a PDF? Expect plenty of the usual tools for that

You’ll also find the usual features here that you typically see in PDF editing software, such as PDF merger tools to combine multiple documents into one, or split a PDF, turning it into several different ones. Deleting a page is also a handful of clicks away. This is actually pretty standard fare.

One of these we enjoyed using was the crop feature, which was very well implemented. Click on the ‘Page’ menu, and select ‘Crop’ from the available list of tools. You then click and drag on the document to create a marquee selection. If you’d rather type in values, you have ‘Top’, ‘Bottom’, ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ fields for that. You also have options to crop only the selected page, a range of pages, or the whole document. Click on the ‘Crop’ button, and you’re done. This is a great way to remove unwanted sidebars for instance, letting you focus on, and keep just the essentials.

• Score: 5/5

EaseUS PDF Editor: Note-taking

• Various tools for when you need to work with others on a particular document

Online collaboration is important when working with a team, and EaseUS PDF Editor has you covered on that front, by allowing you to annotate your PDFs.

It’s also easy to add comments, including boxes, arrows and lines to bring attention to a particular section of the document. You’re even able to send a copy of the PDF to other team members using email.

• Score: 4/5

EaseUS PDF editor scorecard

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