The 12 Best PDF Editors for Windows: Free and Free Trial Options
Last updated on September 14, 2024
Summary :
Learn about the best PDF online tools and offline PDF editors. Free and free-trial options are both included for you to choose the fitting one.
Table of Contents
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Top 5 PDF Editors on Windows
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Top 7 Online PDF Editors for Windows
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How We Picked the PDF Editors?
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FAQs
PDF Editor for Windows
We’ll look at free options, and paid-solutions with free trials, as well as both offline and online-only PDF editors.
PDFgear is a powerful PDF editor for Windows 11&10 overall. It’s completely free and without restrictions.
Top 5 PDF Editor Software for Windows: Compared
| PDF Editor | Premium Pricing | Best for | Key Features |
| PDFgear | TOTALLY FREE | Cost-effective PDF editing features | Direct PDF text editing; Free OCR for PDF documents; Batch processing; Electronically sign PDF; No sign-up, no watermark, no limit |
| Adobe Acrobat Pro DC | Starting at $19.99/month | Professional-level PDF editing | Add logos to brand agreements; Redact sensitive information; Create web forms using existing documents |
| Foxit PhantomPDF | $79 yearly license | Creating standard PDF documents for sharing | Compare PDF documents with highlights; Flexible text and object editing; Position objects with the help of rulers and grids |
| Nitro Pro | $179.99 perpetual license | Requesting and tracking signatures | Integration with Office, SharePoint, and cloud storage; Insert and edit links, headers, and numbering; Add dynamic stamp annotations |
| ABBYY FineReader PDF | Starting at $99/year | Accurate OCR for scanned PDF documents | Turn scanned documents into editable PDFs; Compare documents in different formats; Collaborate and approve PDFs |
The 5 Best PDF Editor Software on Windows
#1. PDFgear – A Handy & Smart PDF Assistant
PDGear is by far the best free PDF editor out there. With it, you can easily edit the text in unselectable PDFs using OCR, annotate PDFs, sign PDFs, insert images and shapes into PDFs, highlight PDFs, and more.
PDFgear allows you to change or replace text in PDF, and also copy text from PDF without line breaks or text gibberish issues.
Besides, the most impressive feature of PDFgear is that it is FREE to use, making it accessible to everyone.
Now with its brand new Chat PDF feature, you can easily read PDFs with ChatGPT, summarize PDFs into sentences, and make edits to the key information. Moreover, the new PDFgear mobile version helps easily edit PDFs on iPhone.
PDFgear Free PDF Editor for Windows
Pricing: Free, no sign-up requirement, no limitations, and no watermark.
Free trial: Completely free to use without restrictions.
Pros
- Extract text from PDF and images with or without OCR
- User-friendly PDF reader and editor screen
- Create and add legal and secured electronic signatures to important PDF documents
- Extensive PDF converting, compressing, and organizing features other than editing
- Convert Word to PDF without changing font
Cons
- Requires installation
- Can’t create PDF forms or insert fillable text boxes into PDF
#2. Adobe Acrobat Pro DC
If we’re talking about the most professional PDF editor tool for your business, then Adobe Acrobat is something you should never overlook.
Developed by the creator of the PDF file type, Adobe, Acrobat Pro DC is a paid and market-leading PDF reader/editor application.
It gives you pro-level document editing features such as comparing files, changing highlight color, requesting signatures, flexible PDF combining, etc. Yet the pricing model of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC can be daunting, as you can see below.
Free PDF Editor for Windows Acrobat Pro DC
Pricing: A free trial of 7 days and then a $19.99/mo annually or $29.99/mo monthly subscription.
Free trial: 7 days
Visit the Adobe Acrobat Software Official Website
Pros
- The industry-leading PDF editing software
- Professional-level PDF annotating and markup features
- Full details in editing features are provided
Cons
- Expensive pricing model
- Too complicated for basic PDF editing needs
#3. Foxit PhantomPDF – An Affordable PDF Management Suite
Foxit PhantomPDF is an affordable PDF management suite designed for businesses. During our testing process, there are certain editing features that we find rather impressive.
With Foxit PhantomPDF, you can compare PDF documents with highlights for quick view changes and make edits, and quickly extract pages from PDF using Foxit in a few clicks.
Users get full control over the edited PDF documents with dozens of feature buttons easily accessible from the toolbar.
Free PDF Editor for Windows Foxit PhantomPDF
Pricing: 14-day free and trial $79.00 yearly plan
Free trial: 14 days
Visit the Foxit Phantom PDF Editor Official Website
Pros
- A very responsive piece of PDF editor software
- Efficient workflow once you get the hang of it
- Comfortable using experiences like Microsoft Office suites
Cons
- Expensive pricing for extensive electronic signature
- Slow response time on certain
- Additional payment is required for more advanced features
#4. Nitro Pro – Flexible and productive PDF Tool
Nitro Pro is something that helps you work fast, with improved productivity and flexibility. After trying its unique features such as digital workflow, progress tracking, and mobile signatures, you’ll totally get my point.
Additionally, the Nitro Productivity Platform also brings handy utilities to the professional level, offering solutions tailored for industries including real estate, healthcare, manufacturing, etc.
Free PDF Editor for Windows Nitro Pro
Pricing: 17-day free trial and $9.991 User/Month subscription
Free trial: 14 days
Go to Nitro PDF Editor’s Official Website
Pros
- Allows for integration with cloud storage like Google Drive
- A free trial that doesn’t require credit card details
- A Nitro mobile version for iPhone, iPad, or Macbook
Cons
- Occasional errors when extracting text from images using OCR
- A complicated user interface that is not so beginner-friendly
- Custom support is limited to paid users only
#5. ABBYY FineReader PDF – An OCR Tool
ABBYY FineReader PDF is widely considered a top-notch OCR tool on the market, and with the editing functions it offers, you can easily make adjustments with your unselectable PDF scanned documents with ease.
As a lesser-known PDF editor tool for Windows 10 and Windows 11, FineReader PDF is a PDF editor with highly-rated PDF editing functionalities that are worth more attention.
Free PDF Editor for Windows FineReader
Pricing: 7-day free trial and subscription starts at $19 monthly
Free trial: 7 days
Visit the ABBYY FineReader PDF Software Official Website
Pros
- Advanced PDF OCR for those who want to edit scanned documents
- Easy-to-use PDF editing and OCR features
- Straight-forward feature layouts and using logic
Cons
- Difficult to avoid quality loss during exporting
- License is required for a full set of features
7 Free Online PDF Editors for Windows
#6. PDFgear Online – A Full-featured PDF Toolkit
PDFgear is available online too. Its web app that offers 70+ PDF-related online tools. It’s completely free to use, and they don’t require logging in and have no limitations for free users.
PDFgear online tools serve as a good alternative when you want to edit PDF without Adobe, the inbuilt printer feature is practical especially when you need to share your PDF documents in a flattened format.
The PDFgear PDF Editor tool covers many useful PDF editing features such as annotating PDFs, extracting PDF pages, merging PDFs, etc. And what’s left is waiting for you to find out.
Free PDF Editor for Windows PDFgear
Pricing: Completely free to use
Go to PDFgear PDF Editor Website
Pros
- A complete set of PDF management tools for PDF editing, conversions, compressions, etc.
- View, edit, fill out, and sign PDF documents with ease
- The PDF editor enables users to add notes, comments, highlights, and markups to a PDF
- It converts PDF to/from 30 image/document formats like JPEG and Word
- Compress PDF by up to 80% compression ratio
Cons
- The performance is highly subject to the internet connection
- Occasional issues when dealing with large PDF files
- Some advanced functions are only available on the free desktop version
#7. iLovePDF – A Maximum of 2 Hours
iLovePDF or I Love PDF, is a big name in document management fields in European countries. As a reliable and popular online PDF toolkit, iLovePDF offers a selection of useful online PDF editors, converters, compressors, and more. iLovePDF has limitations of usage against free users, but the free trial is already impressive.
If needed, there are also conversion tools to change the edited PDF documents into Word or other document/image formats.
Free PDF Editor for Windows iLovePDF
Pricing: Free with limited usage or premium starts at $4/month
Go to iLovePDF PDF Editor Website
Pros
- Browse for 20+ PDF online tools from the intuitive iLovePDF home page
- Add page numbers if your PDF documents don’t have them already
- An iLovePDF mobile phone app is also available
- Edit PDF documents, add signatures, and fill PDF forms easily
Cons
- A limited number of uploaded files for free users
- Long uploading and processing time for multiple PDF documents
#8. Smallpdf – Only 2 Files Are Free
Smallpdf is another highly-recommended online PDF editor that features a clean and concise user interface for you to easily drag and drop your PDF documents and start editing.
With a wide scope of feature buttons, you get to highlight, draw on, insert images into your PDFs, and do many other interesting things. While most SmallPDF tools are efficient and practical, the use times are limited to drive users to their paid plan.
Free PDF Editor for Windows Smallpdf
Pricing: Free with limited usage or premium starts at $7/month.
Go to Smallpdf PDF Editor Website
Pros
- Fast file uploading and processing speed to improve your working efficiency
- Convert PDF to Word to edit the original text-based content
- Redact, blackout, and write on your PDF documents
Cons
- Limited use times of their online PDF tools for free users
- Advanced features such as high compression and converting scanned PDF to Word are for premium users only
#9. Adobe Acrobat Online – Powerful but Constrained Tool
Adobe has the web version of its hero product Adobe Acrobat, too. And just like the desktop Acrobat Pro DC, Adobe Acrobat Online functions nicely in PDF editing, splitting, trimming, and other PDF editing situations, and never returns disappointment.
Yet the drawback of Adobe Acrobat Online is also pretty obvious, free visitors to the site are quite constrained when using Adobe Acrobat Online.
Free PDF Editor for Windows Acrobat Online
Pricing: Starts at $19.99/mo with a free trial
Go to Adobe Acrobat Online PDF Editor Website
Pros
- Compared with the other recommended online Adobe Acrobat Online is faster and more stable
- Practically all PDF editing features you’ll need
- Optimized user experience for common PDF editing features
Cons
- Requires you to sign up or log in to edit and export
- Expensive pricing model as an online PDF editor
- Excessive features bring about lagging issues on low-end devices
#10. PDF Candy – Wise Choice for Low Budget
PDF Candy is another powerful online PDF editor that offers practical editing features for PDF forms and PDF documents from a simple yet feature-rich user interface, offering a list of editing features in the sidebar.
Other than the useful PDF editor, you can also scroll down a bit and browse for 46+ more online tools offered by PDF Candy. There are some features you can’t easily find in other online PDF tools such as unlocking PDF, protecting PDF, adding header and footer, etc.
Free PDF Editor for Windows PDF Candy
Pricing: $6 per month
Go to PDF Candy PDF Editor Website
Pros
- A web extension version of PDF Candy is also available
- Ideal for advanced users who are on a low budget
- Clean and intuitive user interface
Cons
- Limited choices for text font and colors
- Tasks will be queued for unsubscribed user
#11. Sejda – Full-featured Editing Tool
Offering a simple but not-so-simple PDF editor tool beta, Sejda allows you to do many things with your PDF documents, including adding text, links, forms, images, signatures, whiteouts, annotations, shapes, etc.
Dozens of text font formats let you add customizable text to your PDF, and you can use repositioning, resizing, and adjustments to make it more visually pleasing.
Free PDF Editor for Window Sejda
Pricing: Free trial or premium starts at $7.50/month.
Go to Sejda PDF Editor Website
Pros
- Allows for uploading files from Google Drive, Dropbox, One Drive, and URL
- Ample font options for editing text in the PDF document
- Easy-to-use PDF editor software
Cons
- We’ve encountered several issues during the uploading process
- Daily usage limitation for free users
- Relatively fewer PDF editing features
#12. airSlate PDF Editing System – Good for Small Businesses
As the one and only automation platform providing no-code workflow for your PDF document editing, airSlate is extremely ideal for business owners and the self-employed with little coding experience.
The airSlate PDF editing system helps you create fillable PDF documents and web forms for data entry. You can also edit the text-based original content in important contracts and agreements, which includes highlighting text, eSigning, sharing via QR codes and SMS, sending for signing, etc.
Free PDF Editor for Windows airSlate
Pricing: 30-day free trial, and the basic plan at $30.
Visit the airSlate PDF Editing System Official Website
Pros
- An API available for business owners
- The one and only PDF automation option in this post
- airSlate is a platform with constantly added features
- Brings automation to your documentation workflows
Cons
- Excessive features for users with simple PDF editing needs
- The steep learning curve for the training process
- The offline features are quite limited
How We Picked the Most Suitable Free PDF Editors
How do we test the PDF editors, and are the PDF editors reviewed?
In different educational and business scenarios, the editing needs for PDF documents vary. Some common choices are highlighting text, editing text and images, adding comments, adding notes, drawing markup, adding/deleting/rearranging pages, inserting and copying links, annotating PDF documents, etc.
We consider all that and more in evaluating PDF editors, as well as their support for popular PDF editing features is one vital criterion used to measure a better PDF editor.
And more importantly, the nature of being free to use is another merit we all care about. Instead of having to fork out without a clue, it’s better if the PDF editor is free to use, or if we can start with a free trial.
Our editorial team has tested over 50 free PDF editors that run on the Windows operating system, and we will only bring safe, trusted, and virus-free options to our readers.
FAQs
What is the best free PDF editor for Windows 10?
The best free PDF editors for Windows 10 and Windows 11 are PDFgear, Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, Foxit PhantomPDF, PDFfiller, Nitro PDF Pro, FineReader PDF, etc. Among them, PDFgear is worth a try, offering a comprehensive set of PDF editing tools at no cost.
Does Windows 10 have a built-in PDF editor?
No, Windows 10 and Windows 11 don’t have any inbuilt PDF editor applications, like Preview for macOS. However, if you intend to read and view PDF documents, the built-in web browser application Microsoft Edge can help you do that.
How can I edit a PDF on Windows for free?
Yes, with the right free PDF editor tool, you’ll be able to create and edit PDF documents on Windows for free. The easier approach is using a free online PDF editor such as PDFgear Online PDF Editor for basic editing features. If you intend to take PDF editing to a higher level, you can also try the free PDF editor-PDFgear.
Does Windows 10 have a PDF editor?
For users running a Windows 10 or Windows 11 computer, you do have an easily accessible PDF editor tool called PDFgear. All you need to do is to go to the www.PDFgear.com website using a web browser application (like Chrome) on your Windows computer, and you can make and edit PDF documents within the web browser, using PDFgear.
How do I edit a PDF in Windows?
There are two most-used ways for experienced users to edit a PDF document on Windows 10 or Windows 11 computers. One is using an online PDF editor tool like www.PDFgear.com, to edit PDF in a web browser; and another is using a piece of desktop PDF editor software like Adobe Acrobat, after the installation.
Is there a free PDF editor for PC?
Yes, there are many free PDF editors for PC, and the most popular and best-received ones include PDFgear, Smallpdf, iLovePDF, Sejda, and Soda PDF. For more recommended options, please check out the PDF editors listed on this page.
