Documents and notes
Adobe Acrobat Pro alternatives
2 open-source projects that already do this job. Free to use - not free to run, which is what the numbers on the right are for.
The projects
SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF★3,288 GitHub starsGPL-3.0 licenceWindows PDF editor with viewing, annotation, OCR, signing, form filling, merge/split and export features.Open on GitHub ↗ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer★6,794 GitHub starsAGPL-3.0 licenceCollaborative online office suite providing viewers and editors, including PDF viewing and editing with real-time collaboration.Open on GitHub ↗
What you give up either way
- Deep Acrobat desktop integrations and offline native features
- Enterprise-grade e-signature audit trails and legal compliance workflows
- Robust PDF editing edge-cases (complex PDF structure recovery, advanced object editing)
- Built-in Adobe Firefly AI model access and bundled Creative Cloud integrations
- Broad platform support and polished UX across many OS versions
An open-source project doing the core job proves a replacement is possible. It does not prove it matches Adobe Acrobat Pro, and it does not prove anyone has run it for a month. How we decide.