This is a list of links to articles on software used to manage Portable Document Format (PDF) documents. The distinction between the various functions is not entirely clear-cut; for example, some viewers allow adding of annotations, signatures, etc. Some software allows redaction, removing content irreversibly for security. Extracting embedded text is a common feature, but other applications perform optical character recognition (OCR) to convert imaged text to machine-readable form, sometimes by using an external OCR module.
Terminology Creators – to allow users to convert other file formats to PDF. Viewers – to allow users to open, read and print PDF files. Editors – to allow users to edit or otherwise modify PDF files. Converters – to allow users to convert PDF files to other formats.
Multi-platform
NameLicensePlatformsConverts PDF to other formatEdits existing PDFDescriptionLinuxMacWindowsOther Adobe Acrobat Android, iOS, iPadOS and Online View, create, manipulate, print and manage files in PDF. Apache OpenOffice Import from PDF (with restrictions) (after installing an extension), export as PDF including PDF/A. Apache OpenOffice Draw PDF import via software, or extensions. Apache PDFBox Unix Converts PDF to other file format (text, images, html). Collabora Online Android, iOS, iPadOS, ChromeOS and Online Import from PDF, export as PDF 2.0, PDF/A-1b > PDF/A-4 DocHub Android, iOS, Web Online PDF editing and document signing platform. Available via browser, mobile app, and browser extensions. Foxit Software Android, iOS, iPadOS and Online View, create, manipulate, print and manage files in PDF. GIMP Converts PDF to raster images. ImageMagick Converts PDF to raster images and vice versa. Inkscape Import-/Export- from multipage PDF to multipage PDF or (Vector-)graphics. Karbon BSD, Solaris/Illumos Import PDF with multiple pages as layouts, export as a one-page PDF. All standard vector graphics editor features. LibreOffice Import from PDF (extension included by default), export as PDF 2.0, PDF/A-1b > PDF/A-4 LibreOffice Draw PDF viewing and limited editing. Mobipocket Creator Import from PDF and create HTML and MOBI output. Serif PagePlus Desktop publishing (DTP) application allows opening and editing of PDF documents; Allows compatible saving as PDF 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 and 1.7 and supports also PDF/X1, PDF/X1a and PDF/X-3. pdf-parser Python script Extraction and analysis tool, handles corrupt and malicious PDF documents. PDF Arranger FreeBSD Merge, split, rotate, crop, and rearrange PDF pages; export to raster images. Supports booklet generation, page overlay/underlay, and preservation of outlines and hyperlinks. Successor to PDF-Shuffler. PDFedit BSD Software to view or edit the internal structures of PDF documents, and merge them. pdfFiller Android, iOS, Web browser, Online Online PDF editor and document signing solution with a 30-day free trial. Supports editing, annotating, fillable forms, and eSignatures. Includes a library of over 1 million templates and AI-powered document tools. PDFtk FreeBSD, Solaris Command-line tools to edit and convert documents; supports filling of PDF forms with FDF/XFDF data. GUI front-end exists (see PDFChain). PDFsam Basic Desktop application to split, merge, extract pages, rotate and mix PDF documents. PDF Studio Full feature PDF editor. Poppler-utils Unix Converts PDF to other file format (text, images, html). pstoedit Unix Converts PostScript to (other) vector graphics file format. QPDF Structural, content-preserving transformations from PDF to PDF. Scribus Unix, GNU/Hurd, Haiku, OS/2 Export PDF and many other formats, multi-pages and multi-layers. Supports JS forms Cannot edit PDF Files. SignNow Android, iOS, Web Online document signing and PDF editing platform. Smallpdf Desktop Supports merging, splitting, and extracting pages from PDFs. Also rotating, deleting and reordering pages. Converts PDF to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, raster images. Soda PDF Yes Modular PDF software. Solid Converter PDF PDF to Word, Excel, HTML and Text; supports passwords, text editing, and batch conversion. SWFTools SWF conversion and manipulation suite containing a standalone PDF to SWF converter along with a Python gfx API (requires Xpdf). Development libraries These are used by software developers to add and create PDF features.
NameLicenseDescription Apache PDFBox Java developer library for creating, view, extract, print PDF files. BIRT Project Open-source Java based Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) that can create output into PDF, HTML, Web Viewer, Microsoft XLS, XLSX, Doc, Docx, PPT, PPTX, ODT, ODS, ODP, Postscript, comma-separated values and XML files and can be integrated into websites or extended for individual formats and database output. Formatting Objects Processor Open-source print formatter driven by XSL Formatting Objects and an output independent formatter; main output target is PDF. Flying Saucer Cross-platform Java library for rendering XML, XHTML and CSS 2.1 content, usable to output PDF. iText Library to create and manipulate PDF, RTF, HTML files in Java, C#, and other .NET languages. JasperReports Open-source Java reporting tool that can write to screen, printer, or into PDF, HTML, Microsoft Excel, RTF, ODT, comma-separated values and XML files. libHaru Open-source, cross-platform C library to generate PDF files. OpenPDF Open source library to create and manipulate PDF files in Java. Fork of an older version of iText, but with the original LGPL / MPL license. PDFsharp C# developer library to create, extract, edit PDF files. Poppler Open-source multi-backend C++ library derived from Xpdf; no bundled viewer; incl. pdftohtml converter. TCPDF Open-source PHP library to create PDF files.
Creators These create files in their native formats, but then allow users to export them to PDF formats.
NameLicensePlatformsDescription Adobe Acrobat Windows, macOS Desktop PDF authoring suite. Adobe Illustrator Windows, macOS Illustrator can save as PDF, and can recognize and edit text and graphics.Collabora Online Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, iPadOS, ChromeOS and OnlineAll Collabora Online applications allow PDF export; supports also PDF/A-4b; since many import formats are supported (e.g., docx, xlsx, pptx, rtf, doc, xls, ppt, odt, others) conversion is also possible. FineReader Windows, macOS, Linux OCR tool; can save as PDF, and recognize text from PDF. Ghostscript Linux, Windows, macOS, UNIX Viewer, creator, converter; supports also PDF/X-3; used by PdfCreator (until v1.7.3 then .NET Framework 4 since v2.0.0), WinPdf, BullzipPdf, CutePDF freeware version and others. Microsoft Office Windows, macOS All Microsoft Office products from 2007 version allow users to Save as PDF. WordPerfect Windows Word processor with a native "Publish to PDF" export feature. Apache OpenOffice Linux, Windows, macOS All OpenOffice.org applications allow PDF export; supports also PDF/A; since many import formats are supported (e.g., doc, docx, rtf, xls, ppt) conversion is also possible. LibreOffice Linux, Windows, macOS All LibreOffice applications allow PDF export; supports also PDF/A-4b; since many import formats are supported (e.g., docx, xlsx, pptx, rtf, doc, xls, ppt, odt, others) conversion is also possible. Serif PagePlus Windows Desktop publishing (DTP) application; Allows compatible saving as PDF 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 and 1.7 and supports also PDF/X-1, PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3. PageStream Windows, Linux, macOS, Amiga Cross-platform desktop publishing application to open, edit, export. Prince Linux, macOS, Windows, Solaris, Converts HTML, XML, SVG, and MathML to PDF by way of CSS. Scribus Linux/UNIX, macOS, OS/2 Warp 4/eComStation and Windows desktops Cross-platform desktop publishing (DTP) application; supports also PDF/X-3. LaTeX, TeX Windows, macOS, Linux Mark-up language and tools to write technical reports, books, magazines, almost any publication type. LuaTeX Windows, macOS, Linux TeX typesetting system that creates PDF documents. pdfTeX Windows, macOS, Linux TeX typesetting system that creates PDF documents. XeTeX Windows, macOS, Linux TeX typesetting system that creates PDF documents.
Viewers
These allow users to view (not edit or modify) any existing PDF file.
NameLicenseDescription Adobe Reader Adobe's PDF reader Adobe Digital Editions E-book and PDF reader from Adobe used for acquiring, managing and reading DRM-protected e-books and PDF documents. Evince Universal viewer for GNOME. Foxit PDF Reader PDF Viewer / Reader for Desktop computer and Mobile Devices. Allows users to add many elements to PDFs (e.g. arrowed comment boxes, text boxes, links, bookmarks, and images). Ghostview A graphical interface for Ghostscript. Javelin PDF Reader A full functionality PDF reader with support for DRM using encoded and encrypted PDF files in Drumlin's DRMX and DRMZ formats.Chromium Browser includes PDF viewer functionality. Google Chrome (which is based on Chromium) uses the same PDF viewer. Microsoft Edge licenses several Adobe features and branding within its PDF viewer. MuPDF PDF conversion and rendering with anti-aliased graphics. Okular Universal viewer by KDE. PDF.js A JavaScript library to convert PDF files into HTML5, usable as a web-based viewer that can be included in web browsers. Firefox has PDF.js built-in by default. Qiqqa View PDFs in a variety of zoom layouts, annotate, tag, search, cross-reference. Utopia Documents Semantic scientific PDF reader (optimized for life sciences and medicine), allows public comments on PDFs, generates on-the-fly link-outs to scientific databases and resources when used while online. XpdfReader Multi-platform viewer based on Xpdf library; source and binaries available for Linux, Windows and Macintosh.
AmigaOS
Converters Antiword: A free Microsoft Office Word reader for various operating systems; converts binary files from Word 2, 6, 7, 97, 2000, 2002 and 2003 to plain text or PostScript; available for AmigaOS 4, MorphOS, AROS x86 dvipdfm: a DVI to PDF translator with zlib support
Viewers XpdfReader: a multi-platform viewer for PDF files, Amiga version uses X11 engine Cygnix.
Linux and Unix
Converters Collabora Online can be used as a web application, a command line tool, or a Java/Python library. Supported formats include OpenDocument, PDF, HTML, Microsoft Office formats (DOC/DOCX/RTF, XLS/XLSX, PPT/PPTX) and others.
Creators, editors and viewers NameLicenseFunctionsDescriptionViewAnnotateEditCreateConvertLibrary Okular KDE desktop environment; replaces KPDF. Supports a range of annotation types. Annotations are stored separately from the unmodified PDF file, or (since version 0.15 with Poppler 0.20) can be saved in the document as standard PDF annotations. Evince Default PDF and file viewer for GNOME; replaces GPdf. Supports addition and removal (since v3.14), of basic text note annotations. CUPS Printing system can render any document to a PDF file, thus any Linux program with print capability can produce PDF files Pdftk Command-line tools to merge, split, en-/decrypt, watermark/stamp and manipulate PDF document files. Front end to an older version of the iText library. poppler Utility library for rendering Portable Document Format (PDF) documents. poppler-utils includes command-line tools to extract images from a PDF (pdfimages) and convert a PDF to other formats (pdftohtml, pdftotext, pdftoppm). ps2pdf Part of Ghostscript; converts a PostScript file to a PDF. SWFTools pdf2swf component converts PDF to SWF. Scribus Open source program for page layout. XpdfReader Based on Xpdf open source multi-backend library for viewing and manipulating PDF files. PDF Studio Software for viewing and editing PDF documents Inkscape Technically not a PDF editor, but can be used as such page by page Adobe Reader Extant versions are obsolete, Adobe has stopped support for Linux. Firefox Includes a PDF viewer Google Chrome Includes a PDF viewer MuPDF Lightweight document viewer.
macOS
Converters