Introduction
“Free PDF editor” is one of the most misleading phrases in software. Some tools with that label only let you read and comment. Some let you edit text but stamp a watermark on the result. Some are fully free but only on Windows. And some are free for a week, then lock every editing tool behind a subscription. The differences only show up after you have already spent twenty minutes on a document.
This guide compares the free PDF editors actually available for Windows and Mac right now, by what they really let you do for free: change existing text, annotate, fill and sign forms, run OCR, convert to other formats, and export without a watermark. Every feature and limit below comes from the vendor’s own pages and pricing, or from comparisons checked against those pages in November 2026. Prices and plan limits change often, so confirm them on the vendor’s site before you rely on a tool for deadline work. Nothing here is based on hands-on testing — it is a comparison of what the vendors themselves say their free tiers include.
One distinction matters before anything else: editing a PDF is not the same as annotating it. Annotating adds highlights, comments, text boxes and signatures on top of the document. Editing changes the text that is already there — fixing a typo in a sentence, replacing a figure in a table. Many free tools do the first and charge for the second. Know which job you need before you pick a tool.
The comparison at a glance
| Editor | Where it runs | Changes existing text for free? | Open source | Free limit that matters most |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PDFgear | Windows, Mac, mobile, web | Yes | No | None advertised — no account, watermark or page limit on current desktop tools |
| PDF-XChange Editor | Windows only | Mostly a paid feature | No | Features marked PRO work but stamp a watermark |
| PDF24 Creator | Windows only | Yes | No | None advertised; free for private and commercial use |
| LibreOffice Draw | Windows, Mac, Linux | Yes | No | None — fully free and open source |
| Sejda Desktop | Windows, Mac, Linux | Yes | No | 3 tasks a day, 50 MB or 200 pages per file, OCR up to 10 pages |
| Adobe Acrobat online | Web browser | No | No | Annotation, fill and sign free; premium tools one free transaction per 30 days when signed in |
| Adobe Acrobat Reader | Windows, Mac, mobile | No | No | Free to read, comment, fill and sign; text editing is paid |
| Foxit PDF Reader | Windows, Mac, mobile, web | No | No | Free to annotate, fill and sign; text editing is in the paid Editor |
| Apple Preview | Mac only | No | No | Built in; annotates and signs, does not rewrite embedded text |
| Microsoft Edge | Windows, Mac | No | No | Built in; annotates and fills forms, does not rewrite embedded text |
If you only need to fill in and sign a form, the built-in tools — Edge on Windows, Preview on Mac, Acrobat Reader or Foxit Reader on either — are enough, and you can stop reading here. If you need to change the words inside a PDF, the genuinely free options are PDFgear, PDF24 Creator, LibreOffice Draw and, with limits, Sejda and PDF-XChange Editor.
The genuinely free desktop editors
PDFgear: the closest thing to a free Acrobat
PDFgear is the strongest completely free option in this comparison. Its current desktop tools edit text, images, links and form fields, convert PDFs to and from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, TXT and JPG in batches, run OCR in more than 30 languages, and merge, split and sign files. There is no account, no watermark and no page limit on the desktop tools as currently offered, which is what separates it from the trial modes of paid editors. It runs on Windows and Mac, with mobile and web versions alongside. The trade-off is the one that applies to any free tool from a smaller vendor: check the current version’s feature list on the vendor’s site before depending on it, and keep a copy of your original file before editing, because PDF editing can always go wrong in ways that are hard to undo.
PDF24 Creator: the free Windows toolkit
PDF24 Creator is the strongest genuinely free desktop replacement on Windows. The vendor says it is free, has no usage restrictions, and can be used for private and commercial work. It works offline and covers the full toolkit: editing, merging, splitting, compressing, converting and signing. Its main limitation is platform, not price — there is no Mac desktop app, so Mac users need a different pick from this list. If you are on Windows and want a free editor you install once and never think about payments again, this is the one to try first.
LibreOffice Draw: the open-source option
LibreOffice Draw is the free, open-source editor in the LibreOffice suite, and it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. It opens a PDF and lets you edit text and objects on the page, which makes it a real editor rather than an annotator. The catch is how it works: Draw imports the PDF as a drawing, so complex layouts — multi-column text, unusual fonts, dense tables — can shift when the file is imported and exported. It is best for straightforward documents and quick text corrections, and less suited to preserving a design-heavy layout exactly. Test it on a copy of the file first, and check the exported PDF against the original before you send it on.
The free-but-limited desktop editors
PDF-XChange Editor: the biggest free toolset on Windows, with a watermark trap
PDF-XChange Editor has the largest free toolset of the Windows apps here — the vendor counts 257 free features out of 402, roughly 70% of the app — and it is free for private and commercial use with no time limit. The free version covers rich comment and markup tools, form filling, digital signatures, a virtual PDF printer, and OCR. But about 30% of its features are licensed, and using one without a key stamps a watermark on your document that you cannot remove later. The vendor’s own advice is to turn on the option under Help > License Key that hides all licensed tools, so you never trigger the watermark by accident. It runs on Windows 10 and later, including ARM64 PCs. There is no Mac version. Two other limits to know: most of its text-editing features are licensed rather than free, and its OCR output is not directly editable unless you buy Editor Plus or PDF-XChange Pro. Paid licences are perpetual rather than subscriptions.
Sejda Desktop: a friendly editor with clear daily limits
Sejda Desktop is a straightforward editor that can edit text, annotate, sign, organize pages, convert files and run OCR — but its free tier is metered, and the limits arrive quickly for regular use: three tasks per day, documents up to 50 MB or 200 pages, and OCR for up to 10 pages. That makes it a good fit for occasional edits — a form today, a contract correction tomorrow — and a poor fit if you edit PDFs every day. It runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, which makes it one of the few cross-platform options with real text editing in its free tier. If you hit the daily limit, the work waits until tomorrow or you switch tools; plan around that.
The free readers: annotate, fill and sign — but not edit
This group is where most people land by mistake, expecting an editor and getting a reader. They are genuinely useful, and genuinely free, but only for the jobs they actually do.
Adobe Acrobat Reader is free for reading, commenting, filling and signing PDFs. Editing existing text, OCR, redaction, conversion and the advanced document tools belong to paid Acrobat plans — Acrobat Pro is $19.99 a month on a US annual plan billed monthly, or $29.99 month to month, with a 7-day free trial. Reader is the baseline for “open it, mark it up, sign it,” not a free editor.
Foxit PDF Reader is the same shape: free, with annotation tools, standard AcroForm and XFA form filling, handwritten signatures, and digital signature verification, on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and the web. Editing PDF text, OCR, merging, conversion to Office formats, redaction and creating fillable forms sit in the paid Foxit PDF Editor, which Foxit offers on a 14-day free trial. Foxit PDF Editor itself costs $129.99 per user per year, and Foxit is one of the few vendors that still sells a perpetual licence, at $209.99 for PDF Editor 14 without AI and cloud features. After the 14-day trial the editing tools lock and only the free Reader features remain.
Adobe Acrobat online runs in any browser with no install. The free online editor adds text boxes, comments, sticky notes, highlights, freehand drawings, form entries and a signature to an existing PDF. It cannot change the body text already in the PDF — Adobe reserves that for Acrobat Pro. Adobe’s own FAQ sets the free limits: without signing in with an Adobe ID, most tools allow one free transaction and one download of the result; signed in, you can fill, sign, share and comment for free, and trying a premium tool uses one free transaction every 30 days on a rolling basis.
Apple Preview and Microsoft Edge deserve a mention because they are already on your computer. Preview on Mac and Edge on Windows and Mac can add text boxes, signatures and annotations and fill in forms. Neither rewrites the text already embedded in a PDF. Edge does not support XFA forms; Foxit PDF Reader does. If your job is “add a signature and send it back,” use the tool you already have.
How to choose in 30 seconds
Match the tool to the job, not to the brand name:
- You fill in and sign forms every week: Foxit PDF Reader or Adobe Acrobat Reader. Both are free desktop apps with form filling and signing built in, and both run on Windows and Mac.
- You want the most free tools in one app, on Windows: PDF-XChange Editor — but turn on the setting that hides licensed tools — or PDF24 Creator if you want no watermark risk at all.
- You want the most free tools in one app, on Mac: PDFgear, or LibreOffice Draw if you prefer open source.
- You edit PDFs occasionally and want it simple: Sejda Desktop, within its three-tasks-a-day limit.
- You need to change text in a scanned PDF: you need OCR, and the free route is PDFgear or PDF-XChange Editor’s OCR — remembering that PDF-XChange’s OCR output is not directly editable without a paid tier. Scanned pages are images, not text, and no editor can edit them until OCR has read them.
- You work with sensitive documents: prefer a desktop tool that processes files locally — PDFgear, PDF24 Creator, LibreOffice Draw or PDF-XChange Editor — over a browser tool that uploads your file to a server. Free browser editors are convenient, but uploading a contract or a medical form to a server you do not control is a privacy decision, not just a convenience one.
And one habit that applies to every tool on this list: edit a copy, not the original. PDF editing rewrites the file’s internal structure, and a bad edit — a shifted table, a substituted font, a watermark from a licensed feature — is hard to undo. Keep the original, edit the copy, and compare the exported PDF against the original before you send it anywhere.
FAQ
Is Adobe Acrobat Reader really free?
Yes, for reading, commenting, filling and signing PDFs. Editing the existing text, OCR, redaction and conversion belong to paid Acrobat plans. Reader is a free reader, not a free editor.
Which free PDF editor can actually edit text?
PDFgear, PDF24 Creator (Windows only) and LibreOffice Draw all edit existing text for free, as do Sejda Desktop and PDF-XChange Editor within their limits. Acrobat Reader, Foxit Reader, Preview and Edge annotate but do not rewrite embedded text.
Why did my free PDF editor add a watermark?
Because you used a feature that is only free to try, not free to use. PDF-XChange Editor is the clearest example: features marked PRO work in the free version but stamp a watermark that cannot be removed without a licence. Turn on the setting that hides licensed tools, and test on a copy of the file.
What about converting a PDF to Word instead of editing it?
That is often the better route when the document needs heavy rewriting: convert, edit in Word, and export back to PDF. The trade-off is formatting — tables and multi-column layouts can shift in conversion. Our guide to summarizing a PDF with AI (https://blogpress.blog/how-to-summarize-a-pdf-using-ai/) covers a related job, getting the content out of a PDF, and if a Word document goes wrong during the process, our guide to recovering an unsaved Word document (https://blogpress.blog/how-to-recover-an-unsaved-word-document/) covers getting it back.
The bottom line
The free PDF editor that is right for you depends on one question: do you need to change the words inside the PDF, or just mark it up? For marking up, filling and signing, the free readers — Acrobat Reader, Foxit Reader, Preview and Edge — are enough and cost nothing. For actually editing text, the genuinely free options are PDFgear, PDF24 Creator on Windows, LibreOffice Draw, and Sejda or PDF-XChange Editor within their limits. Watch for the two traps that catch everyone: trials that lock after 7 or 14 days, and “free” features that stamp a watermark on your file. Pick the tool that matches your platform and your job, edit a copy, and check the result before you send it.
