Documents & e-signature
Adobe Acrobat: Adobe Acrobat is Adobe's subscription PDF editor for creating, editing, converting and signing PDFs. These tools do a similar job: indie picks from our Friday drops and open source projects, each one chosen by a person.
Updated How we pick
5 alternatives to Adobe Acrobat
Free to use, and you can host them yourself
Open source handwriting note app that also lets you annotate and sign PDFs with a stylus
Best for People who want to mark up and sign PDFs by hand on any desktop
xournalpp.github.io ↗GitHub ↗Free and open source
Privacy-first PDF toolkit that runs fully in the browser
Best for Quick PDF edits without uploading files
Desktop app to merge, split, rotate and rearrange PDF pages
Best for Simple offline page-level PDF editing
Free open source PDF reader and note-taker for macOS built for reading and annotating papers
Best for Mac users who mainly read highlight and annotate PDFs
skim-app.sourceforge.io ↗Free and open source (macOS)
Open source PDF toolkit for editing, merging, converting and signing
Best for Self-hosted PDF tools for teams
stirlingpdf.com ↗GitHub ↗Free self-hosted; paid Pro/Enterprise
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