Alternatives to Adobe Acrobat Reader
Adobe's free PDF reader for viewing, filling in, signing and commenting on PDF files. Notes say what changes if you switch.
The original
Adobe Acrobat Reader
Adobe's free PDF reader for viewing, filling in, signing and commenting on PDF files.
21 alternatives
Most similar to Adobe Acrobat Reader first.
Adobe Acrobat
Adobe's PDF software: the free Acrobat Reader for viewing and commenting, and paid Acrobat plans for editing and conversion.
Foxit PDF Reader
Free PDF reader with annotation, form filling and signing.
Foxit PDF Reader keeps free annotation, form filling and signing, adds a Linux build, and promotes the paid Foxit PDF Editor instead of Acrobat.
Foxit PDF Editor
A commercial PDF editor for creating, editing, converting, signing and protecting PDF documents.
Xodo
PDF reader and editor across web, desktop and mobile.
Xodo offers the same annotation and signing tools on web, desktop and mobile and works directly with Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive, but it lacks a macOS app.
PDF-XChange Editor
Windows PDF editor whose free version covers most everyday tasks.
PDF-XChange Editor runs only on Windows, and its free version covers most everyday tasks, though paid-only features watermark output instead of being hidden.
PDFgear
A free PDF reader, editor and converter for desktop and mobile, with online tools and an AI assistant.
PDFgear is a free closed-source reader and editor that also includes editing, conversion and merging at no cost, with no sign-up required.
Sumatra PDF
A small, fast, open-source reader for PDF, EPUB, MOBI, CBZ, DjVu and other documents on Windows.
Sumatra PDF is a small, fast, open-source GPL reader for Windows only that also opens EPUB, MOBI and comics, but offers no form filling or signing.
Preview
Apple's built-in macOS app for viewing, annotating, merging and signing PDFs and images.
Preview is already installed on every Mac and covers annotating, signing and merging, but it runs on macOS only and lacks OCR.
PDF Annotator
Windows app for adding comments, highlights, drawings and handwritten notes to PDF documents.
Okular
Universal document viewer for PDF, EPUB, comics, DjVu and more.
Okular is a free open-source viewer and annotator for Windows, macOS and Linux that stores annotations separately and opens EPUB, comics and DjVu too.
Skim
macOS PDF reader and annotator built for reading papers.
MuPDF
Compact, very fast PDF and XPS viewer with a command-line toolkit.
MuPDF is a very fast, small open-source AGPL viewer for desktop and mobile with a minimal keyboard-driven interface and no form signing tools.
Evince
GNOME's lightweight document viewer for PDF, PostScript and other document formats on Linux.
Adobe Digital Editions
A free ebook reader from Adobe for EPUB and PDF books on desktop and mobile.
MJ PDF
A fast, open-source PDF reader for Android with a library manager and annotation tools.
GoodReader
An iPad and iPhone app for reading, annotating and editing PDFs, with built-in file management.
JSignPdf
A Java desktop and command-line tool for adding digital signatures to PDF documents.
Orion Viewer
An Android document viewer for PDF, DjVu, XPS, CBZ and TIFF files, built on MuPDF and DjVuLibre.
Autofirma
The Spanish government's desktop application for signing documents electronically with a digital certificate.
Xreader
Linux Mint's document viewer for PDF, PostScript, DjVu, XPS and comic book files.
Jotdown
An Android PDF reader and document manager for researchers and students, with offline annotation.
