Alternatives to Sioyek
A PDF reader built for textbooks and research papers, with keyboard control and quick jumps to figures and references. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Sioyek
A PDF reader built for textbooks and research papers, with keyboard control and quick jumps to figures and references.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Sioyek.
Okular
Universal document viewer for PDF, EPUB, comics, DjVu and more.
Okular is also open source and cross-platform, opens EPUB, comics and DjVu, and stores annotations separately, but lacks Sioyek's figure and reference overlays.
Skim
macOS PDF reader and annotator built for reading papers.
Skim is an open-source macOS-only reader with SyncTeX integration for LaTeX and annotation tools for papers, storing notes in its own format unless embedded.
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 reader with many ebook formats and customizable shortcuts, but it runs only on Windows and lacks reference overlays.
Evince
GNOME's lightweight document viewer for PDF, PostScript and other document formats on Linux.
Evince is GNOME's open-source document viewer with a simple interface, but it runs only on Linux and has no keyboard command system or reference jumps.
MuPDF
Compact, very fast PDF and XPS viewer with a command-line toolkit.
MuPDF is an extremely fast open-source viewer with a keyboard-driven interface, adds Android and iOS versions plus the mutool command-line toolkit, but has minimal research features.
Foxit PDF Reader
Free PDF reader with annotation, form filling and signing.
Foxit PDF Reader offers stronger free annotation, form filling and signing across desktop and mobile, but it is closed source and promotes paid products.
Adobe Acrobat
Adobe's PDF software: the free Acrobat Reader for viewing and commenting, and paid Acrobat plans for editing and conversion.
Adobe Acrobat Reader is free on desktop, web and mobile with commenting and Fill & Sign, but it is proprietary and editing needs a subscription.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Mendeley
A reference manager from Elsevier for collecting, annotating and citing research papers.
Xournal++
Handwritten notes and PDF annotation with a stylus, including on top of lecture slides and scanned papers.
Explainpaper
A web tool that explains highlighted passages of uploaded research papers in plain language.
ChatPDF
An AI tool that summarizes PDFs and answers questions about them, with citations to the source.
