The best free PDF editors let you make quick changes to a Portable Document Format or PDF file without having to spend a thing. While you won’t get nearly as many advanced features as you will with one of the best PDF editors, these free PDF editors should be up to the task if you just want to create PDFs and make simple edits to them.
The best free PDF editors offer basic editing and document-creation abilities. However, some also toss in a few free extra features. For example, many free PDF editors can be used to annotate PDFs while others can recognize scanned text — all at no extra cost.
We’ve tried out, tested and used half-a-dozen free PDF editors while comparing them to their paid counterparts to find the best one for you. These are the best free PDF editors you can download or use online right now if all you want to do is to make a few simple tweaks or edits to a PDF file.
The best free PDF editors you can download today
(Image credit: PDF Candy)
PDF Candy may be one of the more compelling free PDF editors, mostly because it offers an OCR option not available in other free PDF editors.
While you can’t edit the OCR’d text directly within PDF Candy’s web-based PDF editor, you can upload a PDF file and have PDF Candy extract text and create a text document, RTF file, or Word document in both .doc and .docx formats.
PDF Candy’s tool set is formidable. You can use 44 different tools to create or convert PDF files. Additionally, you’ll find tools for rearranging pages within a document, adding watermarks, protecting PDF files with passcodes, editing metadata within a PDF file, splitting or adding pages to documents, and extracting images. All these tasks are as simple as selecting the tool, uploading a document and allowing PDF Candy to work its magic.
When you finish one task in a document, you’ll get a list of other tools you can use for different tasks. Once your changes are complete, you can download the edited document or upload a new document to work on. PDF Candy keeps all of your documents in a queue so you can download them all at once after you’ve finished making changes to them.
While the actual text-editing tools in PDF Candy are as limited as with every other free PDF-editing app, everything else PDF Candy has to offer puts it head and shoulders above the other free options.
(Image credit: Red Software)
PDFescape is an excellent option for online PDF editing. Simple to use and available to anyone with a web browser, PDFescape may be all you need to edit and annotate PDF files.
PDFescape used to have a limit of either a 10MB or 50-page PDF file. That 10MB file-size limit remains in place, but you can now edit files of up to 100 pages for free.
PDFescape offers ample annotation tools. You can use the app to fill out forms, create form fields, insert text and web links, highlight text, add sticky notes, redact or strike out text, crop and rotate images, add or remove pages and even lock and encrypt PDF documents.
You’ll have to contend with severely limited font options though as PDFescape only offers five fonts, one of which is a generic “signature” font that looks nothing like your own signature. But otherwise, you’ll find a lot more tools in PDFescape than you will in the typical, bare-bones free PDF editor.
(Image credit: Apple)
Apple’s Preview application is built into every version of macOS. Not only is it capable for working with PDF files, but it also offers a number of other image-editing features. It is the multitool of the image-editing universe, capable of opening virtually any image file you may encounter.
The bulk of Preview’s markup capabilities aren’t obvious when you first open the app, although you’ll find a few basic tools for rotating pages and highlighting text on the basic toolbar.
Preview’s full set of markup tools appears when you click a small markup button that looks like a pencil tip located next to the search tool in the Preview toolbar.
Those markup tools include text-selection options; drawing tools you can use to add freehand drawings to a document; a text tool for adding additional text to a document; a tool that adds shapes and notes; and a signature tool that you can use to capture your signature using your Mac’s camera, a tablet or your trackpad.
Preview is a solid option for basic PDF editing, and if you own a Mac, accessing Preview’s powers is as simple as launching the app.
(Image credit: King Street Labs)
