Compare the Top PDF Annotators as of November 2025

What are PDF Annotators?

PDF annotation tools are pieces of software designed to allow users to add notes and highlight text on PDF documents. They can be used by students or professionals to mark up documents, make comments, and organize information in an intuitive way. Annotations may also include drawing shapes or adding images. The annotations can then be saved with the document for easy sharing and future reference. Compare and read user reviews of the best PDF Annotators currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

  • 1
    Apryse PDF SDK
    Apryse (formerly PDFTron) powers the future of document technology. We help businesses, developers, and enterprises handle documents with unmatched speed, accuracy, and security. Whether running in secure server environments or delivering seamless web-based experiences, Apryse makes document workflows smarter and easier. With Apryse, you can: Embed powerful document features directly into your apps — from viewing and editing to collaboration and compliance. Run at enterprise scale on secure server infrastructure, ensuring reliability without cloud dependencies. Deliver seamless in-browser document experiences with responsive, accessible, and feature-rich web capabilities. Trusted globally, Apryse empowers organizations to simplify operations, enhance productivity, and create exceptional document experiences.
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  • 2
    Nutrient SDK
    Nutrient is the comprehensive solution for all your PDF needs, offering tools that effortlessly integrate and operate PDF functionality across any platform. 1. SDK PRODUCTS Integrate robust PDF functionality into iOS, Android, Windows, web (JavaScript), or any cross-platform technology, providing capabilities such as PDF viewing, markup, collaboration, and more. 2. LIBRARIES Utilize our potent .NET and Java libraries to boost your backend applications with batch processing of redactions and PDF forms, OCR’d scanned text, and editing of PDF documents, directly from your application server. 3. PROCESSOR Our dynamic PDF microservice, Processor, enables swift generation of PDFs from HTML, including HTML forms, along with Office-to-PDF conversions, OCR, redaction, and XFDF merging and exporting. 4. PDF API Use hosted PDF API to generate, convert, and modify PDF documents in your workflows. We manage the development and server administration, letting you focus on what you do best.
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  • 3
    RAD PDF

    RAD PDF

    Red Software

    Add a fully functional PDF editor to your ASP.NET website in minutes! Compatible with 99% of desktop & mobile browsers, from Internet Explorer 6 through the latest iOS Safari release, RAD PDF simply works. No plugins or other software needed. RAD PDF natively supports the most commonly used PDF features. Beyond a PDF reader, RAD PDF equips web applications with a browser-based PDF editor & PDF annotator. Features not even available in Adobe Acrobat Reader can be used to provide advanced PDF functionality. By enabling PDF form filling, PDF redaction, & PDF signing directly in the web browser, RAD PDF users can utilize PDF features without worrying about having the right platform or software installed! Allow your app to design new PDF forms, protect content, sign PDFs, & more using an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI). Client (JavaScript) and server APIs allow for endless possibilities .NET Core, Framework, & .NET 5+ supported Try editing any PDF with RAD PDF, FREE!
    Starting Price: $299 per developer
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  • 4
    Nitro PDF

    Nitro PDF

    Nitro Software

    Nitro PDF is a full-featured PDF editor and is recognized as the strongest alternative to Adobe Acrobat. It's simple to purchase, easy to implement, and straightforward to use. With a powerful suite of tools, you can easily edit, convert, sign, annotate, combine, secure, and protect your documents, streamlining workflows and allowing you to focus on what matters. Our flexible plans and affordable pricing cater to everyone, from individual users and small teams to large enterprises. Plus, we offer a wide range of support resources to ensure the success of every customer.
    Starting Price: $15/user/month
  • 5
    PDF-XChange

    PDF-XChange

    Tracker Software Products

    The smallest, fastest and most feature-rich free PDF viewer/editor on the market. Create, view, edit, annotate, OCR and digitally sign PDF files - and that's just the beginning. Please see below for a breakdown of the main features of PDF-XChange Editor. More than 70% of the features in PDF-XChange Editor do not require a license to use. The remaining features, which are clearly identified, will place a 'trial' watermark on output if they are used without a license. PDF-XChange Editor Plus includes additional functionality for the creation and editing of fillable forms, the creation of customizable dynamic stamps, and an Enhanced OCR plugin.
    Starting Price: $46.50 one-time payment
  • 6
    Systweak PDF Editor

    Systweak PDF Editor

    Systweak Software

    Systweak PDF Editor is a powerful, easy-to-use PDF management tool for Windows that lets you view, edit, convert, merge, split, compress, and secure PDF files effortlessly. Whether you're a student, professional, or business user, this all-in-one PDF solution covers everything you need. You can edit text and images directly in your PDF, convert files to and from formats like Word, Excel, and JPG, and organize pages with drag-and-drop ease. With built-in OCR, you can extract editable text from scanned documents. Add annotations, comments, watermarks, and protect your files with password encryption or digital signatures. Batch processing makes handling multiple PDFs quick and efficient. Systweak PDF Editor is compatible with Windows 11, 10, 8.1, and 7, and offers a clean, intuitive interface ideal for all user levels. Experience a smarter, faster, and more secure way to work with PDFs.
    Starting Price: 34.98
  • 7
    MuPDF

    MuPDF

    Artifex Software

    Add powerful PDF functionality to all of your software application projects. MuPDF is a highly versatile, customizable PDF SDK that can be used as a PDF renderer, viewer, or library. The tiny footprint and lightning-fast performance make MuPDF a perfect fit for mobile browsers, eBooks, and embedded applications where small size is key. MuPDF supports a variety of interactive features including annotations, form filling, digital signatures, redactions, text search, and progressive loading. The wide range of input and output formats and our full range of platform support deliver a flexible solution to easily and successfully fulfill your project’s unique needs. MuPDF supports PDF, XPS, OpenXPS, EPUB, FictionBook 2 and CBZ. The MuPDF API easily integrates with all of the major platforms including Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, OpenBSD, and Windows. C++ and Python bindings have been added making it easy to use the MuPDF library from these languages.
    Starting Price: $749/per platform*
  • 8
    Able2Extract Professional
    Convert, create, edit, OCR, compare, and sign PDFs. Customize the interface language and its appearance from light to dark themes for working with PDFs comfortably. Tailor your conversions by selecting a page, a paragraph, or even a single line for conversion. Custom PDF to Excel conversion to convert complex PDF table data to Microsoft Excel with pinpoint precision and a Smart Layout Detector for keeping table styles intact. Edit PDF text and pages. Annotate and redact PDF content. Sign PDF documents. Fill, edit and create PDF forms. Split documents into even parts. Convert scanned PDFs in English, French, Spanish, and German. Automate the batch PDF conversion process by queuing up a large volume of PDF files and even whole directories. Batch create PDF from a wide range of formats and merge all PDFs into one file. Create secure PDFs from blank pages or existing documents by adding passwords and file permissions. Able2Extract Professional: Your Swiss Army Knife for PDF files.
    Starting Price: $149.95/one-time/user
  • 9
    Xodo

    Xodo

    Apryse

    With Xodo, you can edit, annotate, sign, and share PDFs on desktop, mobile, and web. Xodo makes working with PDFs quick and easy, so you can get things done. Gone are the days of printing and faxing. Sign contracts, expense reports, cover letters, or any other document on your smartphone or tablet, using just your finger or stylus. Sign it then and there. Instead of fumbling for a pen or wasting printer ink, use just your finger to sign any document. Save your signature to sign future documents instantly with just a tap of your finger or a click of the mouse. Then save and share with whoever needs it. What used to take back and forth emails can now be done in seconds. Xodo takes the stress out of filling forms. Simply complete forms on the go from your smartphone or tablet by typing onscreen for fill-in fields and tapping to select checkboxes and other options. Save time and energy. Fill in forms from your smartphone or tablet, then save and share with whoever needs to see it.
  • 10
    PDF Guru

    PDF Guru

    PDF Guru

    Convert, edit, merge, and compress PDFs with just a few clicks. Download your document quickly and with ease. Our PDF converter can create PDF files in seconds! We use HTTPS encryption to protect your digital data when you make PDF files on our platform. Redact a PDF, modify text, add new objects, and perform even more actions all in one place. We designed an intuitive interface so that you can use our PDF maker without any hassle. Our PDF maker works online on all platforms, whether it's Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS, or Android. If you don’t want others to open, edit, or print your file, you can lock or restrict access to it.
  • 11
    AmindPDF

    AmindPDF

    AmindPDF

    AmindPDF's user interface is very user-friendly and makes the operation of PDF easy. It can recognize PDF text as paragraphs or whole blocks of text, allowing users to edit text directly and smoothly, like in MS Word. for PDF protection, it allows adding passwords, setting document permissions, placing signatures, adding watermarks to PDF It also supports batch operations to process files, such as merge/split tool, compression tool, creation tool, Bates numbering tool, and conversion tool, so users can process multiple PDF files at once. AmindPDF is available for a number of platforms: Windows, iOS, and Android. Users are able to use the same PDF tool on a computer or mobile phone. So AmindPDF let you process or edit PDFs anytime, anywhere.
    Starting Price: $9.90
  • 12
    AvePDF

    AvePDF

    PSPDFKit

    Complete solutions for document processing, analysis and conversion. Providing innovative solutions for document imaging and document management. Imaging technologies. Since 2003, we develop solutions to manage electronic documents (locally or online). Below is a selection of the technologies used by ORPALIS: Full PDF support. View, process, edit, annotate, compress, and sign all your PDFs TWAIN and WIA scanning. Manage all scanners and acquisition devices. Barcode reading and writing. 1D and 2D (Datamatrix, QR-Code, Micro QR-Code, PDF417, and more). Hyper-compression. Mixed raster. Content compression, Color Detection, JBIG2 & JPEG 2000 compression. Formats support. View and convert documents in 100+ formats Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Extract text and MICR characters from scanned images. Form/template recognition. Automatic Document Recognition and forms processing. Annotations. Use various tools to annotate your documents online and offline.
  • 13
    ImageGear

    ImageGear

    Accusoft

    This document and image clean up and processing toolkit allows developers to quickly integrate document handling functions like image conversion, creation, editing, manipulation, compression, and image enhancement to their applications. ImageGear gives your application the ability to clean up files including deskew, line and speckle removal, and more. In addition, ImageGear’s color processing tools allow you to enhance image quality resulting in a reduction in compressed file sizes. This document and image processing SDK includes a variety of APIs that enable image clean up and processing. Add functionality to your applications, learn how you can meet all your document lifecycle needs with ImageGear. This PDF SDK allows .NET developers to add robust PDF functionality to an application. Users can view, convert, annotate, compress, redact, insert, remove, or reorder pages. Learn about all of the PDF manipulation capabilities and discover how ImageGear PDF can enhance your application.
  • 14
    jPDFEditor

    jPDFEditor

    Qoppa Software

    jPDFEditor is intended for developers and integrators. For end-users, Qoppa Software offers PDF Studio, our advanced desktop PDF editor for Mac, Windows and Linux based on our same solid PDF technology. jPDFEditor can load documents from files on a local or network drive, from a URL and from Java input streams for documents that are generated runtime or come from other sources, such as a database. After editing documents, the library can save them. Features: -Display PDF files -Print PDF files -Convert text and image files (gif, png, jpg, tiff) to PDF on the fly -Fill and save interactive PDF forms -Markup PDFs (all PDF annotations and text markups supported) -Digitally sign PDF files -Content editing -Redaction -Optional OCR module -Optional Comparison module -Access jPDFProcess powerful PDF manipulation API -Text search, selection, copy -Easy navigation with thumbnail, bookmark, annotation, signature views -Advanced tools: zoom, loupe, snapshot, pan and zoom
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