Adobe PDF best alternative

[Sapere]

Want to rotate your scanned PDF page? That will be $12.99! - Rip off of the century.

It's one of the applications that has been used most worldwide and on daily basis, but not allowing basic functionality or not having any alternatives was everyone's pain. Being hit with "Pro version" ad, or taking forever to open a single page, or glitching out because AI is initialising in the background.

By far the best alternative I found is Stirling PDF - https://stirling.com/

   

They do have "Pro" and "Enterprise" versions, but you get 60+ PDF tools for Free. On top of that it loads faster than Adobe PDF due to reduced bloat.

If you want an app for your phone - ReadEra. Although made for books, it loads PDFs on your phone without ads and very quickly, just like Stirling PDF.

I must also warn, Stirling PDF is not great on phones yet. When opening PDFs in non-standard size it takes long to open, and zoom doesn't work correctly as of date.

So these are great alternatives that I've been using that have absolutely no compromises, instead giving you tools that you haven't used yet if you never wanted to subscribe to $12.99 to be able to rotate a page twice a year.

[Sapere]

Some may suggest PDFGear, or some other PDF solutions.

But I've tried them. They're slower and sometimes change how it opens files, and doesn't allow to view multiple files in the same window. I was specifically looking for something that opens multiple files fast and allows to switch between documents.

The UI in most apps is all over the screen. But Stirling PDF is a gem that even search engines don't show. Although, it allows for the backend to be self-hosted - any operations that you do, don't put strain on your system if you're hosting the backend to complete operations/pdf processing. Even if you process a hundred files, your server handles it. I haven't tried the standalone version, but very happy with the alternative that does everything, with simple UI and doesn't involve other services i.e. third party online PDF processing sites which shouldn't be used for any sensitive documents.

It does show "Upgrade" banner at the top, which still only shows above the document and doesn't reappear for some time after you close it and open more documents.

Other software I found that they're free, but don't provide instant display of multiple files like Stirling PDF.