MacPDF Editors

The single biggest fork in this category is whether an app actually edits PDF text and forms, or just reads and annotates them — and the two free entries here land on opposite sides of that line. PDFgear, from PDF Gear Tech, is a genuine full editor at no cost: text editing, form editing, merging, converting, and signing, with no paywalled tier found at verification time — unusual in a category where most competitors reserve real editing for a paid plan. Skim is the opposite: a free, open-source reader and annotator built for marking up academic papers with highlights and notes, but it doesn’t rewrite PDF text or fill complex forms — the honest comparison is to Preview with better annotation tools, not to a full editor.

Setapp shows up twice more in this section, in two different forms worth telling apart. Nitro PDF Pro, from established PDF company Nitro Software (GoNitro), is Setapp-exclusive with no standalone purchase found — the effective price is a Setapp membership starting at $14.99/mo, not a per-app fee. PDF Squeezer, by contrast, is sold both ways: $19.99 standalone or included in Setapp. It’s also worth knowing PDF Squeezer does one narrow job — offline, on-device batch compression — rather than full text and form editing.

WPS Office is the outlier of the five: less a dedicated PDF tool than a full Microsoft Office alternative (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation) that happens to include real PDF editing in its free Standard tier, with a $5.83/mo Pro+ tier adding OCR and format conversion. Worth including for anyone who’d rather have PDF handling bundled into a free office suite than install a separate single-purpose app.