5 free PDF tools that prove you don't need Adobe Acrobat anymore

Adobe Acrobat is an excellent PDF app, except that you need to pay a monthly subscription to use its premium features. But that subscription stops making sense when other PDF apps can do everything Acrobat does and not charge you a cent for it.

Whether you need better PDF reading support or want to make serious modifications to your existing PDF, there are free PDF tools that prove you don't need Adobe Acrobat anymore, except maybe for some rare cases.

PDFGear

A full-fledged PDF editing suite that's completely free

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PDFGear is the best Adobe Acrobat alternative you can find for personal use. It's feature-rich and completely free, doing most of what Adobe charges you $19.99 a month for without asking for a cent or even a sign-up.

The highlight, of course, is its text editing capability. Most free PDF editors either slap a watermark on your saved document or limit how many files you can edit per day. PDFGear does neither. You can open a PDF, click the Edit tab, select the Text tool, and start modifying content directly. The app detects the existing font in your document and matches it, so your edits blend in seamlessly.

Beyond editing, PDFGear packs in annotation tools, form filling, page management, file conversion, OCR, compression, and even an eSign feature. It's available on Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. The interface can feel crowded at first with all these features packed in, but everything is organized under clearly labeled tabs, so you won't spend long finding what you need.

PDFGear OS Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android Version 2 .14 PDFGear is a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat that does all the basic editing that you need which usually goes for a subscription price.

PDF24

A focused toolbox for splitting, merging, and managing PDFs

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If you don't need a full-fledged PDF editor but only a way to split, merge, and rename PDFs, PDF24 is a more sober solution. It's been around since 2006, and while its interface looks like it hasn't had a redesign since then, it's one of the most reliable PDF toolboxes on Windows.

PDF24 is not a PDF editor in the traditional sense. It's a collection of over two dozen individual tools, each handling a specific task. Need to merge five invoices into one file? Open the Merge PDF tool, drag your files in, rearrange the thumbnails, and click Merge. Need to split a 200-page document into chapters? The Split PDF tool offers four modes, including custom page ranges. Every tool follows the same drag-and-drop, click, and save pattern.

What sets PDF24 apart from many free alternatives is that it's completely free for both personal and commercial use. It also includes a virtual printer, a PDF comparison tool, OCR, compression, and a signature tool. The trade-off is that it can't edit text within a PDF, and every tool opens in its own window, so workflows that involve multiple steps feel clunky.

PDF24 OS Windows Price model Free PDF24 is a free, offline PDF toolkit for Windows that lets you merge, split, compress, convert, and edit PDFs without subscriptions or watermarks. A no-nonsense Adobe alternative.

SumatraPDF

A lightweight, open-source reader for PDFs, eBooks, and more

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If you need a lightweight and open-source app to read PDFs, eBooks, comic books, and CHM documents, it's hard to recommend anything but SumatraPDF. It's been my go-to PDF reading tool for large books and documents where I just need to read without any bloat getting in the way.

The installer is less than 8MB, and the app takes about 23MB of disk space after installation. It's also available as a portable app you can run from a USB drive. I've dragged 800-page PDF files packed with charts into SumatraPDF, and they loaded almost instantly. Chrome and PDFGear took noticeably longer with the same files, and scrolling through them wasn't nearly as smooth.

SumatraPDF's interface is deliberately minimal, as you only get an option to add documents and a basic toolbar on top. However, as you continue to use the app, it builds a Frequently Read section with thumbnails of your recent documents over time, supports tabbed viewing for multiple files, and offers different reading modes including book view and full-width view. It also supports basic annotations like highlighting, underlining, and adding stamps.

While it won't replace a dedicated PDF editor, for reading and quick markup, nothing comes close to its speed and usability on Windows.

Sumatra PDF OS Windows Price model Free SumatraPDF is a free, ultra-lightweight PDF and eBook reader for Windows. SumatraPDF opens instantly, supports multiple formats like EPUB, MOBI, and CBZ, and runs portable from a USB drive.

Sejda

A fuss-free online PDF editor that preserves your fonts

Tashreef Shareef / MUO Credit: Tashreef Shareef / MUO

Sejda is not completely free, but it comes with limited free online document editing that none of the other PDF tools on this list offer. It can edit any PDF document while keeping its original font intact, which is incredibly useful if you want to make last-minute changes.

PDFGear can do this too, but you need to install a fairly large desktop app to use it. Sejda offers a desktop version as well, but for non-sensitive document editing and occasional use, its online editor lets you modify PDFs without losing fonts and without adding any watermark to your edited document.

The free tier is generous enough for occasional use, with up to three tasks per hour, with documents up to 200 pages or 50MB. Beyond that, premium plans start at $7.50 per month. Sejda also offers standalone tools for merging, splitting, compressing, and converting PDFs, along with a workflow feature that lets you chain multiple tasks together.

Sejda PDF OS Windows, macOS, Linux Price model Free, Premium Sejda PDF lets you edit, merge, split, compress, sign, and convert PDFs right in your browser or via its desktop app. Free to use on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Desktop compatible Yes

MJ PDF

A smooth, open-source PDF reader for Android

MJ PDF

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If you prefer to read your PDFs on your Android phone, MJ PDF is an excellent free and open-source alternative. PDFGear does offer its app for Android and iOS, but it's not exactly lightweight, and most mobile PDF readers are either bloated with ads or constantly nudging you toward a premium upgrade.

At around 15MB, MJ PDF opens files quickly and offers a clean interface. A three-dot menu gives you access to theme switching, table of contents, page jumping, and search. The app also remembers your reading position in every document, which is a handy feature.

What's more, you can lock the screen orientation, enable auto-scroll, turn pages with the volume buttons, and even fine-tune zoom and rendering quality for large files. It's not going to edit your PDFs or merge your documents, but for reading on a phone, it's the cleanest experience I've found.

MJ PDF OS Android Price model Free (open-source) MJ PDF is a free, open-source Android PDF viewer that's blazing fast, lightweight at just 15 MB, and packed with dark mode, powerful search, and auto-scroll.

Paying for PDF apps is a thing of the past

If you don't work in a team that needs real-time collaboration, cloud-based document sharing, or compliance features like PDF/A archiving and certificate-based digital signatures, the five tools above cover nearly every PDF task you'll run into. Personally, I haven't touched Adobe PDF reader in months, and I don't think that's changing anytime soon.