Alternatives to iLovePDF Desktop
Desktop version of the iLovePDF toolset for offline batch work. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
iLovePDF Desktop
Desktop version of the iLovePDF toolset for offline batch work.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as iLovePDF Desktop.
PDF24 Creator
A free Windows PDF toolbox with a printer driver and dozens of tools for merging, converting, compressing and editing PDFs.
PDF24 Creator is free offline Windows software with merge, split, compress, OCR and a virtual printer, but has no macOS version.
PDFsam Basic
Splits, merges, rotates and extracts PDF pages entirely offline, in batches rather than one file at a time.
PDFsam Basic is AGPL-3.0 open source with free offline batch split, merge and rotate on Windows, macOS and Linux, but no OCR or editing.
Sejda PDF
PDF editor available both online and as a desktop application.
Sejda PDF adds a Linux desktop build and web version with local desktop processing, while free use is limited to a few tasks per hour.
Stirling PDF
A self-hosted web PDF toolkit for merging, splitting, converting, signing and editing PDFs on your own server.
Stirling PDF is open source with native desktop apps and self-hosting, offering 55+ tools, though manual server setup needs Java, LibreOffice and Tesseract.
CleverPDF
Set of free online and desktop PDF conversion tools.
CleverPDF offers Windows and macOS desktop conversion that keeps files local, adding iWork format conversion, with a closed-source freemium model.
iLovePDF
Browser PDF toolkit for merging, splitting, compressing and converting.
iLovePDF moves the same tools to the browser and mobile apps, but files are uploaded to its servers with daily free-use limits.
PDFgear
A free PDF reader, editor and converter for desktop and mobile, with online tools and an AI assistant.
PDFgear provides free editing, conversion and merging on Windows, macOS and mobile without an account, with AI features sent online.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
PDF Arranger
Drag PDF pages into the order you want, rotate them, crop them, and merge two files together.
PDF-XChange Editor
Windows PDF editor whose free version covers most everyday tasks.
Smallpdf
Browser PDF tools for compressing, converting, editing and signing.
qpdf
Command-line tool for content-preserving PDF transformations.
PDF Mix Tool
A lightweight open-source Linux app for merging, splitting, rotating and rearranging PDF pages.
PDF Squeezer
A Mac app that shrinks large PDF files by dragging them onto its window.
