Best free PDF editors 2024: Our top picks

Michael Ansaldo

If you work with PDF files regularly then a PDF editor is an indispensable tool. Whether it’s part of your job, you manage PDF files for your own personal use, or you just need to complete a one-off editing task, a top editor program is an essential piece of software. Full-featured editors such as Adobe’s Acrobat Pro DC might provide all of the bells and whistles, but a free PDF editor can still offer most of the important tools of a paid service for no additional charge.

Plus, many free PDF editors are browser based, which means that you don’t need to worry about about platform- or device-compatibility issues.

Of course, free products won’t come with every feature of their premium counterparts. So, if you find that you need more advanced tools such as password protection, Bates numbering, or e-signatures, then you’re probably better served by a premium PDF editor.

Updated 2/26/2024: Check out our latest review of PDF24 Creator — a capable and easy-to-use free editor that can come in handy for one-off tasks. But a limited toolset and the use of separate interfaces for each task, keep it from ranking on this list.

We also reviewed PDF-XChange Editor, which offers a much more robust toolset in its free version, but it watermarks the documents, requiring you to pay for removal.

EaseUS PDF Editor – Edit, Convert, Compress & Protect PDFs

EaseUS is a free PDF editor that offers options to read, create, edit and convert PDFs both in program and online. The streamlined interface allows you to edit or convert with ease for any formats like doc, excel, ppt, jpg, png or epub, even merge, split, compress, watermark e-sign or OCR PDF files.

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