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Stirling PDF vs Adobe Acrobat: catalog facts
Stirling PDF	Adobe Acrobat
Freemium Free plan is $0/month with no card required (60+ tools, web/desktop/self-hosted, 500…	Freemium Acrobat Reader is free to download and use without a subscription; text and image editing…
Windows, macOS, Linux, Web, Self-hosted	Windows, macOS, Web, Android, iOS
55+ PDF tools covering signing, converting, merging, editing, OCR and redaction, chained in a stateful workspace with… Runs on Docker, bare metal, Kubernetes or as native desktop apps for Windows, macOS and Linux	Free Reader for Windows 10/11, macOS 10.15+, iOS 16+ and Android 8+, plus an Acrobat web app in… Reader includes commenting, highlights, sticky notes, form filling and Fill & Sign at no cost
Open-core: SSO, external database, Google Drive integration, SAML and audit logs are gated behind paid Team or… Manual server setup needs Java 25+ plus LibreOffice and Tesseract for conversions and OCR	Editing text and images, creating and converting PDFs need an Acrobat Standard or Pro subscription Proprietary; Adobe logos may not be used without a license
Self-hosted, Downloadable app, Web application, Hosted service	Downloadable app, Web application, Hosted service
Open source	Closed source
License: MIT	License not stated
No account needed	Not stated if an account is needed
Works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 20, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 20, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.