5 Best PDF Editors for Mac in 2025/2026

Today, PDF editors have become an essential tool to handle PDFs. They are usable in various scenarios, including editing existing PDF text/images/links, adding annotations, converting PDFs, organizing PDF pages, and more.

However, the main challenge is selecting the right PDF editor for Mac. There are dozens of PDF editors, each offering unique features. Therefore, it becomes overwhelming to pick the best PDF editing software for Mac that includes the right set of features and is still cost-effective.

This article reviews 5 of the best PDF editors for Mac, highlighting their features and providing a detailed comparison to help you make the right decision.

Part 1. Top 5 PDF Editors for Mac

Out of plenty of PDF editors for Mac, below we have hand-picked the top 5 choices to have feature-packed PDF editing experience:

1. UPDF – The All-in-One PDF Solution

UPDF is a modernized and advanced PDF editor that dominates for its AI backed features. It can handle all aspects of PDFs, such as edit, annotate, convert, organize, OCR, and more. It also offers an exceptional AI assistant to chat with PDFs and beyond.

Talking specifically about PDF editing, UPDF offers powerful PDF editing features that can edit all elements on PDFs. With UPDF, you can:

• Edit All Elements on PDFs: UPDF makes editing PDF as in Word. It is easy to edit the text, images, watermarks, links, background, headers and footers, forms, pages, and more in PDFs.
• Create, Fill, and Sign PDF Forms: Create interactive PDF forms, fill out PDF forms with intelligent field recognition. Duplicate fields across pages for perfect alignment and precision. Add electronic or digital signatures into your PDF forms!
• Organize PDF: Rearrange PDF pages: add, delete, rotate, replace, extract, split, crop, and change PDF page order
• Side-by-side Translation: View the original text and translated version side-by-side while keeping the document layout intact on UPDF AI Online.

• Compress PDF: Reduce your large PDF size from six output quality: lossless, maximum, high, medium and low.
• Combine documents: Merge Word, Excel, PDF, and PowerPoint files all at once into a single PDF.
• PDF Portfolio: combine multiple files of any format into a single organized PDF package for easy sharing and professional presentation.
• Annotate PDF: Highlight, mark, underline, strikethrough, draw, and insert comments/sticky notes/stamps/stickers/attachments, etc..
• Convert: UPDF can convert PDF to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and images; it also supports creating PDFs from these formats.
• UPDF AI: With the smart AI assistant within UDPF, you can read PDF documents more easily by summarizing, translating, converting them to mind maps. UPDF AI Online also integrates with Paper Search and Scholar Research features, let you search for more than 220M papers with citations and synthesize papers into a structured literature review. 

• More: UPDF provides many other features, including protecting PDFs, performing OCR, scanning and converting your paper files into digital files, and syncing your documents to other devices.

Pricing

• UPDF offers pricing plans for personal, enterprise, and education use. For detailed prices, please refer to the official website.

Supported Platforms: One account to use on four platforms (Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS)

Watch the video below to learn how to edit a PDF on Mac with UPDF.

Click the button below to download UPDF and try it for free. You will get a free 1GB of cloud space after downloading.

2. Adobe Acrobat – The Industry Standard

When we are talking about the best PDF editing software for Mac, we cannot skip Adobe Acrobat. It is a feature-packed PDF editor that helps individuals, professionals, and enterprises fulfill almost every PDF need.

Adobe Acrobat's has many PDF editing features, including:

• Add, edit, and remove text and images in a PDF.
• Add or edit background, header, and footer.
• Annotate PDF with different markup options.
• Extract and edit text with OCR.
• Merge and split PDFs.

Also Read: UPDF vs. Adobe Acrobat >>

Pricing

• Acrobat Standard: $12.99/month or $155.88/year
• Acrobat Pro: $19.99/month or $239.88/year

Supported Platforms: Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and web.

Overall, Adobe Acrobat is best suited for enterprises that need a reliable PDF editor and can afford its expensive pricing plans.

In contrast, UPDF offers almost similar features as Adobe Acrobat, but it is 4x times cheaper. So, why pay more when you can get the best PDF editing experience at a much lower cost? Download UPDF and test its features yourself for free.

3. PDF Expert – Quick and Intuitive

PDF Expert is another best PDF editor for Mac, known for its quick and intuitive interface. It makes it easy to edit, organize, annotate, and sign PDFs. With PDF Expert, you can:

• Edit PDF text by adding, altering existing text, or changing fonts.
• Add, resize, and replace PDF images.
• Add links to a PDF.
• Organize and merge PDF pages.
• Edit outlines for easy navigation.
• Add page numbers.
• Redact sensitive information.

Also Read: UPDF vs. PDF Expert >>

Pricing

• Yearly: $79.99/annually
• Lifetime: $139.99/one-time
• PDF Copilot: $11.99/month

Supported Platforms: Mac and iOS

Rating and Reviews in G2

• "I love that this was a once off purchase, and I'm able to use the app forever. I can edit any type of PDF document: the text, images and add / remove signatures."
• "On some documents, the formating of the document can take some extra time to make the edited text fit appropriately, but I have always managed to make it work."

Overall, PDF Expert is suited for individuals and businesses who rely on Apple ecosystem and need an easy-to-use PDF editor.

3. Foxit PDF Editor – Reliable and Cross-Platform

Foxit PDF Editor is a comprehensive free PDF editor Mac that provides an all-in-one PDF solution to edit, annotate, convert, fill, organize, and do more with PDFs. It also provides an AI assistant to summarize complex documents and chat with PDFs.

Talking about its PDF editing functionalities, you can:

• Edit PDF text by changing text, font, color, size, style, and more without altering the layout.
• Edit PDF images, objects, page layout properties, object shading, and more.
• Reduce file size by compression.
• Add videos, audio, images, and 3D.

Also Read: UPDF vs. Foxit >>

Pricing

• PDF Editor (desktop + web): $129.99/year (without admin console)
• PDF Editor+ (desktop + web + mobile): $159.99/year

Supported Platforms: Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and web

Overall, Foxit PDF Editor is ideal for business users who need a cross-platform and advanced PDF editor and are not concerned with hefty pricing.

5. Nitro PDF Pro – Comprehensive Yet Accessible

Last on our list of best PDF editing software for Mac is Nitro PDF Pro. It is an advanced PDF editor that allows you to edit, convert, sign, and secure PDFs. It lets you:

• Edit PDF text.
• Add links and images.
• Annotate PDF by highlighting, underlining, drawing, adding text box/shapes, etc.
• Scan and edit scanned documents.
• Redact sensitive information.
• Add watermarks and page numbers.

Also Read: UPDF vs. Nitro >>

Pricing

• Nitro Pro Standard: $15/month/user or $180 annually (Windows, macOS, and iOS)
• Nitro PDF Classic: $270/one-time/3-year license (Windows only)
• Nitro Pro Business: Customized plan

Support Platforms: Windows, macOS, and iOS.

Overall, Nitro Pro is best for individuals and SMBs who want a feature-packed PDF editor to fulfill their day-to-day PDF editing needs.

Part 2. Detailed Comparison: Which One Should I Choose?

From the above comparison table, it is clearly evident that UPDF leads the race. Not only it dominates for its features, but it offers the most affordable PDF editor for Mac. Give UPDF a try and access its features yourself.

FAQs

Conclusion and Recommendation

You have many options when choosing a PDF editor for Mac. Your choice will depend on the features you want and your budget. The above best PDF editing software for Mac can fulfill your basic to advanced PDF editing needs.

Out of all of them, UPDF gets the upper hand due to its exceptional PDF editing features, other advanced functionalities, powerful AI assistant, and cost-friendly pricing plans. Therefore, we will wrap up by recommending you try UPDF for free by clicking the below button.