Wherever you look in the digital world, you can’t escape from the appeal of PDF, and a good thing too in our opinion: it’s a format that preserves the layout of a document no matter which device it’s being read on. 

Having reviewed all the best PDF editors and even tried the best free PDF editors to see how they measure up, we decided to give Xodo a go. How does this desktop, mobile, and online PDF editor compare? We put it to the test.  

Xodo: Pricing & plans

• 4 different subscription services, with 2 simple prices. Xodo’s aim is clearly to make it as easy as possible to welcome you into the fold - and the free option doesn’t hurt

Xodo comes in multiple flavours, depending on where you’ll be using the service the most. There’s Xodo Mobile, designed for Android and iOS devices. It allows you to convert files, redact and optimise them, and includes annotation tools and OCR capabilities.

Xodo Web is an online service, designed to be accessed via your web browser. It possesses additional tools (over 30 according to the pamphlet), including an AI-based summariser.

Xodo PDF Solution is software for your Mac, PC or Linux system. The number of tools increases to 60.

Each of these cost the same on their own: under $10 a month on a yearly contract, or $13 when you pay on a month by month basis. If all of them appeal, you can get the Xodo Document Suite instead, for $15 a month for a year, or $20 monthly.

If you’re still undecided, you can also explore Xodo for free. For the purposes of this review, we’ll be looking at the online solution, which you can check out by clicking here. 

• Pricing & plans: 4/5

Xodo: Tools

• All the tools at the heart of Xodo are easy to access, and well-organized.

Unlike many PDF software we’ve tested, Xodo is very welcoming to new potential customers, letting you explore numerous tools and features for free, without you even having to create a free account with them. Point your web browser towards xodo.com, click on the big dark blue ‘Explore All Tools’ button, and off we go.

This leads you to a page showcasing every tool the online service offers (these can also be accessed via Xodo.com’s menubar, under the ‘Tools’ menu).

You’ll find most are designed for specific jobs. The first ones on the list for instance, focus on editing your files, be it to add text boxes, images, or annotating work, redacting sections of it, cropping and compressing, and more. Essentially if you’re used to this type of service, these tools won’t surprise you. Also included is the ability to edit Microsoft Word .docx documents.

Next comes conversion tools, either from PDF to another format, and vice versa (Mac users don’t need the latter as that capability has been baked into the operating system since Mac OS X). There are also tools to reorder pages, as well as merge and split PDFs. It’s all very well setup and organized, making it easy for you to choose the exact feature you need at any time.

• Tools: 4/5

Xodo: User experience

• Xodo offers you many tools, but we feel it would be more workflow-efficient if more tools were combined so you could perform many different actions in one go.

The tools available range from the simple, such as reordering pages in a document, to the complex, such as altering the very content of a document. Now some tools focus exclusively on what they’re supposed to do. For instance, select the Delete Pages tool, upload your document, and all you’ll be able to do is choose which pages to delete. Makes sense, right? It’s a simple concept but it does exactly what it says.

Except, wouldn’t it be great if not only could you delete a page, but also rotate another, and rearrange a couple more for instance? You may say, “this isn’t how this service works”, but you’d only be partially correct. The ‘Rearrange PDF’ tool, allows you to Rotate some pages as well. 

In fact, the ‘Split PDF’ tool also allows you to rotate and rearrange pages, which really feels like this is how it should be: you’ve uploaded a document, so you should be able to perform as many actions as you’d like with it. The tools that allow this feel much more expansive, and you feel pretty restricted by the ones who don’t.

Should you need to do multiple actions to a document that can’t be done with a single tool, you’ll have to perform the first action, download the new changed file, and re-upload it, this time in the next tool, to carry on your work. It feels needlessly time consuming.

• User experience: 3.5/5

Xodo: Advanced tools

• Xodo has a string of powerful tools on offer which work well and are surprisingly easy to use - but most are paywalled or have limited-time trials.

By far the most powerful tools in Xodo’s arsenal are those in the Edit category. The ‘Redact’ tool for instance is incredibly simple to use: just select the parts you wish to remove, and Xodo will create a new file with those sections blacked out and un-selectable.

Even better is the 'PDF Editor' which allows you to add text boxes, highlights, annotations, the works - you’re offered numerous ways to write on a PDF, and you can go one further with the ‘Edit PDF Text’, which gives you the ability to alter the very fabric of the PDF, altering the words, changing the chosen font, resizing images, deleting sections, you name it, you can do it.

This is where you may well reach some limitations to the free trial: surprisingly, you can do a lot for free, from basic organisational work, to intense annotations. You’ll even be allowed to download the finished work for free. Until you can’t. You have a set number of actions you can perform. Exceed that allotment, and you’ll have to wait 7.5 hours before you can explore further… or start a subscription and carry on working faster.

More advanced tools, such as ‘Edit PDF Text’ let you perform changes but won’t allow you to download the finished product, while ‘Ask PDF’ (an AI-centric tool which lets you interact with the content of a file), needs a subscription to get started. Those limitations are perfectly understandable, as the aim is to get you as a customer after all. You are offered a 7-day free trial, but you’ll need to subscribe to take advantage of it (just don’t forget to cancel it before the end date, should you decide this service is not for you).

• Advanced tools: 4/5

Should I buy Xodo?

Buy it if...

You need to work with PDF files, and perform numerous actions, all from one service, and all from any device you can log onto.

Don't buy it if...

Your needs can be covered by free software (such as Apple Preview), you don’t like working online, and you don’t like timed restrictions when trying to use the service for free.

For more productivity tools, we tested the best free PDF readers, the best PDF reader for Mac, and the best PDF readers on Android.

Adobe Acrobat has evolved since its early days as a PDF all-in-one, growing into three separate multi-platform apps: Acrobat Reader, Standard and Pro. 

Each software adds an increasing number of features, so, if you just need to view a PDF document, Acrobat Reader is ideal. Acrobat Standard and Pro are best for PDF creation and editing, electronic signing, and a lot more document management options. In most cases, and in our experience, Acrobat Standard is the best PDF editor for most people, while Acrobat Pro adds a few more tools for the business or professional user. 

We’ve already taken a look at Reader and Standard - you can check out our Adobe Acrobat Reader review and the Adobe Acrobat Standard review for more. It’s time to finish this PDF trilogy by exploring the capabilities of Adobe Acrobat Pro. 

Adobe Acrobat Pro: Price & plans

• Pro is the most expensive version of Acrobat, but it’s also included in Adobe’s All Apps Creative Cloud bundle. 

It’s not going to be a surprise to learn that Pro is the most expensive Acrobat version - $19.99 / £19.97 a year paid monthly (monthly and annual upfront subscriptions are also available). 

Unlike Acrobat Standard though, you can opt for a seven-day free trial, if you’d like to check its features out, but it does involve you initiating a subscription, so don’t forget to cancel it in time if you decide the app’s not for you.

There’s also an alternative way to grab a copy of Acrobat Pro: by getting an All Apps Creative Cloud subscription. It’s more expensive, but bundles the PDF editor with dozens of other apps like Photoshop and Premiere Pro, that all integrate seamlessly. This means that if you already have a subscription to handle your professional creative work (or you need one), you already have the most full featured version of Acrobat. 

• Pricing & plans: 4/5 

Adobe Acrobat Pro: Interface & experience

• Very elegant and well designed interface, offering you various ways of performing the same action, which gives you the flexibility of using the one that suits you best.

Just like Reader and Standard - and just as you’d hope, expect, dream - Acrobat Pro’s interface is clean, simple, well-designed. We found the tools are easy to locate and use, offering you various ways of working. 

All told, this creates a highly flexible interface that works for you. Acrobat Pro doesn’t force you to alter your workflow, to do it the Adobe way or else. It’s a fantastic piece of design, particularly for Standard and Pro. We did find Reader’s interface felt more like an advert for Adobe’s superior PDF editors. 

• Interface: 4/5

Adobe Acrobat Pro: Standard tools

• All the features available in the Standard edition are present and correct in Pro’s comprehensive toolkit

As you’d expect, all the tools available in Standard can be accessed in Pro. This means you’re able to comment on a PDF, share it with others and track the progress of those files. You can change a PDF’s format, and export it as a Microsoft document (Word, Excel or PowerPoint), turn a PDF into images, convert it to HTML, edit it, change the embedded text and images, create PDFs from scratch, fill in and sign PDFs (it’s some of the best eSignature software we’ve ever tested), and there’s plenty more besides.

You also have the ability to combine multiple PDFs into a single file, reorder pages, and delete some. When it comes to security, adding a password to protect a PDF’s content and prevent others from editing it is a cinch. This is all done in a very intuitive way, and even though you might select a specific tool, you’re able to effortlessly access others without having to leave the confines of said tool.

It’s a very comprehensive, even impressive, feature-set - and that’s just the tools you get in Acrobat Standard. 

• Tools: 4.5/5

Adobe Acrobat Pro: Pro tools

• Some very useful and obviously professional tools, coupled with others that should really be considered mainstream by now.

While the ‘as-Standard’ tools feel weighty, essential for a PDF power user, we couldn’t shake the sense that some tools labelled as “Pro”, don’t really feel that they belong in a “Pro” category. 

Take the ability to turn a scanned paper document into a searchable PDF. Although it’s undoubtedly highly useful to be able to do that, some of the best free PDF editors, and even modern hardware, have been offering such a feature for a while now. Take your iPhone camera: you can take a photo with it and any text contained within it becomes selectable - and all without having to pay a subscription.

Another one which is more understandably a Pro feature, is the ability to create and validate PDFs to meet accessibility standards. This is a very important feature for any business, and once you check a document, you’re given a list of issues to fix to improve a document’s accessibility. Some can be resolved automatically, while others may require a little more work. But, we find it baffling why this is restricted to the Pro version? Wouldn’t this feature be of greater benefit if the Standard version had access to it as well?

Be that as it may, as with other features included with Acrobat, it all works well and is easy to understand. There’s even a menu called ‘Explain’ which sends you to a webpage telling you why there’s a problem, and why it’s important to fix it.

Something that makes more sense in the Pro arena is the ability to compare two versions of a document. Acrobat will give you a summary of the disparity through a visual representation, and even gives you the ability to filter those results to make it clearer what has changed. We could see this as an invaluable tool in anyone’s workflow.

Redaction can also prove highly useful when there’s sensitive information on a PDF you’d rather not share with others. As you’d expect, the way it works is incredibly simple: just highlight all the problematic sections, and once you’re done, click on ‘Apply’.

In addition to blanking out certain passages and images, there’s another little highlight here. You also have the option of automatically removing a document’s metadata, embedded URLs, comments, and more. Adobe calls it ‘sanitising’ and if you’re into not passing on too much data, it’s a one-click wonder.

It’s clear that Adobe Acrobat Pro’s market is much more of a niche one than who they’re aiming for with ‘Standard’. It’s highly likely most people will be more than satisfied with Standard, even though Pro is the one included with the All Apps Creating Cloud subscription. However, if those additional tools are crucial to your workflow, you’ll find them extremely well implemented and easy to use in Acrobat Pro.

• Pro tools: 3.5

Adobe Acrobat Pro: Scorecard

Should I buy?

Buy it if...

You need advanced PDF editing tools, including redaction, and accessibility compliance, or you already subscribe to Adobe’s Creative Cloud package, which includes it by default.

Don't buy it if...

You want a simple way to view or make basic alterations to a PDF - in our experience, Pro is equipped with more features than most casual users will need.

Adobe Acrobat Pro: Alternatives

We've tested out man of the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives if Pro isn't for you. 

If Acrobat Pro is a bit more than you bargained for, we recommend checking out Adobe Acrobat Standard - it's a great choice for most people's PDF needs. 

For some other top apps, see our pdfFiller review for a browser-based PDF editor that's surprisingly full of features. For a free alternative, see our PDF24 Creator review - it's our favorite free PDF tool and it's packed full of essential document management tools. 

We tested the best free PDF readers- and here are our top picks

Canva may be famed for its impressive - and impressively simple - online design app. But the platform offers a lot more than that. 

The company offers easily one of the best free PDF editors - especially if you’re looking for a simple-to-use PDF editor in your browser, look no further.

With a new set of tools, including some AI cleverness, we've re-reviewed the latest version of the popular online document design platform to see how it compares today.

Canva PDF Editor: Pricing & plans

• Generous and entirely free with only a few limits

Across the board, Canva costs nothing. It’s not just the PDF editor that’s gratis - you can also use the video editing software, photo editor, free logo designer, and a whole host of other digital design tools without opening your wallet, let alone breaking the bank. 

It’s generous. But there are a few limitations on the free plan. Premium assets like stock photos and illustrations are locked behind a subscription. 

Canva has three monthly/annual subscriptions, Pro, Teams, and Enterprise (the yearly plans are at least 16% cheaper than the monthly ones). Each unlock more tools like cloud storage, social media scheduling, and brand kits - ideal for maintaining consistent company colors and logos across multiple designs. There are also additional plans for those in academia. Pro is for individuals, Teams needs to include a minimum of three people, and you pay per seat, and Enterprise is a more bespoke plan, with uniquely tailored pricing.

You can check out the tool by clicking here. 

• Pricing & plans: 5/5

Canva PDF Editor: Interface & experience

• Easy to use in almost every way

In order to start working on a PDF, you have to create an account with Canva (if you don’t already have one). Don't worry, just like the PDF service we’re exploring, doing this is free, and only takes a few minutes to perform. Once in, all you need do next is upload the file you wish to work on.

Creating a new PDF document through Canva's editor is different to, say, Adobe Acrobat (or the countless best Acrobat alternatives out there). Rather than setting you free on a blank canvas from the get-go, you’ll need to upload a file. 

Once you’ve got your document uploaded, Canva will process it and transform it into an editable file. And it works far better than you might expect, capable of identifying images, text blocks, and backgrounds. 

There’s very little you can’t modify at this point simply by clicking on the relevant component. Just to make it even easier, hover over any on-page element and a pink outline will let you know what can be edited, deleted, or moved in your PDF. 

If you’d rather build a document from scratch, you can do this through the main Canva design app by creating an A4 canvas, using one of the many templates included, then exporting as a PDF. The design process, however, remains the same. 

The PDF editor’s layout is more or less the same as with its graphic design software, and even the Canva Logo Maker and Canva Video Editor. 

So, if you’re familiar with these, you should have no trouble getting started here. But even if this is a new platform for you, Canva is delightfully simple to use - it’s one of the key reasons it’s become a popular tool for businesses. 

Tools line the left-hand panel. It’s here where you can select a new template, find new elements (in the PDF realm, this is mostly stock photos and vector graphics), upload your own media, and tweak background colors for all or individual pages. 

Head down to the Apps category and you’ll find a host of useful extras. Want to connect your Google Drive or YouTube channel to the platform? This is where you’ll do it. It’s also where you can import media files from the likes of Box, Dropbox, and Google Photos. 

Elsewhere, you’ll find a basic, but fun drawing tool that lets you - what else? - draw on your PDF files like it’s Microsoft Paint. 

Notably, the section includes a QR code creator - the comeback kid of the tech world. Just add your URL and hit Generate QR Code. Just like everything else in Canva, these are customizable, with options to change both background and foreground colors to fit your brand and your PDF design.

Ultimately, the Apps category is pretty vast, and we recommend exploring it top to toe to find tools that’ll fit your workflow. 

• Interface & experience: 5/5

Canva PDF Editor: Editing & modifying

• Simple software for editing PDFs

Dragging and dropping is the name of the game in Canva PDF Editor. Once an element - be it a text box, image, or anything else - is added, you can get it into position simply by dragging it around the page. 

Usefully, when moving elements, the tool adds invisible guidelines. This makes it incredibly easy to align blocks with each other or lock an element dead-center. So, even if you’re new to creating and modifying PDFs, you can walk away with a professional-looking document. 

If you’re printing your PDF, you can also add margins and bleed lines to ensure you haven’t placed objects too close to the edge, thereby cutting off content. 

To remove or edit existing content, click on an element. This reveals a small pop-up just above it, letting you add a comment (to engage in online collaboration), duplicate, or delete the element. Hit the three dots to that menu’s right to unfurl even more options, such as copy, paste, align and work with layered elements.

For even more efficiency, Canva PDF Editor supports keyboard shortcuts - the traditional ones you’re used to, such as copy, paste, duplicate, undo and redo work as expected, you can precisely move elements using the arrow keys, or select an element, hit delete and it’ll vanish.

It is quite remarkable the level of control you have over a PDF: usually, being able to alter the existing content of a document is relegated to the premium side of a service, but here, you can do it all for free.

• Editing & modifying: 5/5

Canva PDF Editor: Tools

• Limited tools beyond PDF creation and editing

One of the features that sets top PDF editors apart are the inclusion of advanced tools like eSign software and OCR software. For example, Foxit PDF Editor is equipped with a powerful set of redaction tools - perfect for businesses that need to remain compliant with the raft of data security regulations and laws. The same goes for EaseUS PDF Editor, which has a massive range of professional editing tools. 

And this is where Canva’s online PDF editor begins to show its (admittedly few) limitations. Since Canva is, first and foremost, a digital art tool, it doesn’t feature the usual bag of tricks you’ll find in dedicated editors. 

Take PDF conversion as an example. Many platforms let you upload a file and convert it to another. That’s technically possible with Canva PDF Editor - but it’s a more complicated method than most, as you’ll upload a document or image file and download it as a PDF (and vice versa). But it’s not a true PDF converter. It lacks a range of output formats. Nor is it as efficient as other platforms because of this. 

As such, it’s tailor-made for creating, say, marketing assets or admin forms (there’s even a Canva Forms tool for this specific purpose, with Typeform integration, too). 

It's also remarkably easy to share files for review, simply by clicking the Share button, which is where you can also change the filetype and download your documents. However, it likely won’t suffice if, for example, you need to track the documents you send to others, check who’s signed them, and perform OCR on scanned documents.

• Tools: 3/5

Canva PDF Editor: Scorecard

Should I buy?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Canva PDF Editor: Alternatives

Adobe Acrobat, Foxit PDF Editor, EaseUS PDF Editor, and Nitro PDF Pro are great if you want extra power from your PDF editor. 

Soda PDF Online, PDF24 Creator, PDF Candy, and SmallPDF are ideal when you want a simple PDF editor in your browser.  

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

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.