Compare the Top PDF Annotators as of April 2025

What are PDF Annotators?

PDF annotation tools are pieces of software designed to allow users to add notes and highlight text on PDF documents. They can be used by students or professionals to mark up documents, make comments, and organize information in an intuitive way. Annotations may also include drawing shapes or adding images. The annotations can then be saved with the document for easy sharing and future reference. Compare and read user reviews of the best PDF Annotators currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

  • 1
    Apryse PDF SDK
    Apryse, previously known as PDFTron, takes document solutions to the next level, making work better and life simpler. Bring PDF viewing, annotating, editing, creation, and generation to any web, mobile, desktop or server framework or application. As a global leader in document processing technology, Apryse gives developers, enterprise customers and small businesses the tools they need to reach their document goals faster and easier. Our product portfolio includes Apryse SDK, Fluent, iText and XODO. Apryse technology works with all major platforms and a wide variety of unique file types.
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  • 2
    Nutrient SDK
    Nutrient is the comprehensive solution for all your PDF needs, offering tools that effortlessly integrate and operate PDF functionality across any platform. 1. SDK PRODUCTS Integrate robust PDF functionality into iOS, Android, Windows, web (JavaScript), or any cross-platform technology, providing capabilities such as PDF viewing, markup, collaboration, and more. 2. LIBRARIES Utilize our potent .NET and Java libraries to boost your backend applications with batch processing of redactions and PDF forms, OCR’d scanned text, and editing of PDF documents, directly from your application server. 3. PROCESSOR Our dynamic PDF microservice, Processor, enables swift generation of PDFs from HTML, including HTML forms, along with Office-to-PDF conversions, OCR, redaction, and XFDF merging and exporting. 4. PDF API Use hosted PDF API to generate, convert, and modify PDF documents in your workflows. We manage the development and server administration, letting you focus on what you do best.
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  • 3
    Adobe PDF Library SDK

    Adobe PDF Library SDK

    Datalogics Inc.

    Shorten development times & get to market faster with Adobe PDF Library. Global OEMs, SaaS and enterprise end-users rely on Adobe PDF Library to automate the creation, editing and management of PDFs. An Adobe partner, our SDK uses the same source code as Acrobat for stability, reliability and quality results. Adobe PDF Library gives developers flexible programming language and platform options, and is currently available in .NET, .NET Framework, Java and C/C++ on Windows, Linux, MacOS, as well as via NuGet and Maven. Our extensive documentation includes getting started guides, API references, and hundreds of sample code examples on GitHub to help developers precisely create and define PDF workflow solutions. Pricing for Adobe PDF Library is based on your business model & software usage. Free trial includes access to our PDF technology experts who can help with proof of concept as well as extend your free trial license if needed. Download and get started today!
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  • 4
    MuPDF

    MuPDF

    Artifex Software

    Add powerful PDF functionality to all of your software application projects. MuPDF is a highly versatile, customizable PDF SDK that can be used as a PDF renderer, viewer, or library. The tiny footprint and lightning-fast performance make MuPDF a perfect fit for mobile browsers, eBooks, and embedded applications where small size is key. MuPDF supports a variety of interactive features including annotations, form filling, digital signatures, redactions, text search, and progressive loading. The wide range of input and output formats and our full range of platform support deliver a flexible solution to easily and successfully fulfill your project’s unique needs. MuPDF supports PDF, XPS, OpenXPS, EPUB, FictionBook 2 and CBZ. The MuPDF API easily integrates with all of the major platforms including Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, OpenBSD, and Windows. C++ and Python bindings have been added making it easy to use the MuPDF library from these languages.
    Starting Price: $749/per platform*
  • 5
    KDAN PDF Reader

    KDAN PDF Reader

    Kdan Mobile Software

    KDAN PDF Reader is your all-in-one PDF solution. Edit, sign, OCR scan, convert, annotate, and fill forms in PDF documents. With innovative AI features, speed up your document workflow! Designed for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, KDAN PDF Reader is trusted by millions for its comprehensive features and efficiency. AI FEATURE • Analyze and extract key information or tables from a PDF, then convert the data into spreadsheets for further analysis or visualization. • Chat with PDF and get document analysis, advice, new ideas, or content summary • Text redaction - automatically identify and block sensitive information in a document
    Starting Price: $59.99/year (billed annually)
  • 6
    novaPDF

    novaPDF

    Softland

    Using novaPDF Pro you can easily create high quality searchable PDF files in an affordable and reliable way from any Windows application. It installs as a printer driver and helps you generate the PDF files by simply selecting the "print" command from any application (you can convert Word documents, Excel sheets, PowerPoint presentations, AutoCad drawings, emails or web pages). You can password protect the PDF files you create and permissions can be restricted to prevent the document from being viewed, printed, modified, copied or annotated. Your PDF files will be secured with 40-bit and 128-bit encryption algorithms. Features include: customizable resolution, PDF security, PDF links, PDF bookmarks, text/image compression, profiles and more. novaPDF also includes a PDF SDK for developers that want to integrate PDF creation capabilities in their software.
    Starting Price: $19.99 (one time payment)
  • 7
    AmindPDF

    AmindPDF

    AmindPDF

    AmindPDF's user interface is very user-friendly and makes the operation of PDF easy. It can recognize PDF text as paragraphs or whole blocks of text, allowing users to edit text directly and smoothly, like in MS Word. for PDF protection, it allows adding passwords, setting document permissions, placing signatures, adding watermarks to PDF It also supports batch operations to process files, such as merge/split tool, compression tool, creation tool, Bates numbering tool, and conversion tool, so users can process multiple PDF files at once. AmindPDF is available for a number of platforms: Windows, iOS, and Android. Users are able to use the same PDF tool on a computer or mobile phone. So AmindPDF let you process or edit PDFs anytime, anywhere.
    Starting Price: $9.90
  • 8
    Conholdate.Total For .NET
    Conholdate.Total for .NET is the complete package of all .NET APIs as offered by Aspose and GroupDocs. It empowers the developers to perform a wide range of document processing tasks from within their own .NET based applications. This .NET package is an all-in-one solution for all types of document managements systems because it offers the ability to create, edit, print, view, annotate, compare, sign, automate, search and convert between a wide range of popular document formats. Process a Multitude of File Formats - Conholdate.Total for .NET empowers you to build an incredibly versatile file processing system capable of handling many popular file formats. You can easily open, create, modify and convert file formats. Conholdate.Total for .NET currently supports following file types: Microsoft Word documents Microsoft Excel spreadsheets Microsoft PowerPoint presentations Adobe PDF documents Microsoft Outlook Microsoft Project files and more than 100 other file formats
    Starting Price: $4,999
  • 9
    JPedal

    JPedal

    IDR Solutions

    JPedal is a versatile Java PDF Library for displaying, converting, printing, and parsing PDFs in Java applications. With over 20 years of development, it supports a wide range of PDF files. Key features include: -PDF to Image Conversion: Converts PDFs to images in various formats. -Java Swing PDF Viewer: Offers multi-page display, search, printing, and annotation editing. -Text and Image Extraction: High-quality extraction of text and images from PDFs. -PDF Search: Supports searching with wildcards and regular expressions. -Form & Annotation Handling: Supports XFA and AcroForms, enabling form data access and annotation editing. -Document Manipulation: Allows deleting, merging, splitting, and optimizing PDFs. -Security & Performance: Runs locally without third-party dependencies, processing PDFs up to 3x faster than alternatives.
    Starting Price: $950 one time fee
  • 10
    PDFKit.NET 5.0

    PDFKit.NET 5.0

    TallComponents

    Create and manipulate PDF documents. Split, append, stamp, encrypt, extract, fill, and more. PDFKit.NET is a 100% managed (verifiable) .NET class library for creating and manipulating PDF documents. It consists of just a single assembly that can be xcopy-deployed. It has no dependencies other than the .NET framework. Central to PDFKit.NET is a consistent and highly intuitive object model consisting of classes like document, page collection, page, canvas, shape, bookmark, annotation, field, etc. The focus of the development team is always to ease the task of integrating our class library into a larger application. Fill text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, etc., and save the form either editable or flattened with the PDFKit.NET 5.0. With PDFKit.NET 5.0 you can populate and consume dynamic XFA documents with the new XFA processor API. Extract all graphics on a page as a collection of shapes with PDFKit 5.0. Shapes can be text, images, and curves.
    Starting Price: $990 per year
  • 11
    SmartOffice

    SmartOffice

    Artifex Software

    With SmartOffice you can easily view, edit, create, print, present, and share Microsoft Office and PDF documents via your mobile device. The SmartOffice PDF functionality allows you to view, annotate, highlight and share PDF documents. Convert Office documents to PDF, save to your mobile device or to a cloud account, and print wirelessly to thousands of supported printers. SmartOffice Mobile App. A full-featured app that serves as a faster, lighter alternative to MS Office 365. SmartOffice can be downloaded from the AppStore or GooglePlay for personal use or can be wrapped in an enterprise security platform to enable secure mobile productivity. SmartOffice SDK. SmartOffice offers a variety of solutions that can be securely incorporated into your enterprise document workflow platform. The SmartOffice SDK seamlessly and securely integrates with your EFSS, MDM or EMM environment, while the SmartOffice mobile app can be wrapped in an enterprise security platform.
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    PDFKit

    PDFKit

    PDFKit

    PDFKit is a PDF document generation library for Node and the browser that makes creating complex, multi-page, printable documents easy. The API embraces chainability, and includes both low-level functions as well as abstractions for higher-level functionality. The PDFKit API is designed to be simple, so generating complex documents is often as simple as a few function calls. Access privileges (printing, copying, modifying, annotating, form filling, content accessibility, document assembly). Accessibility support (marked content, logical structure, Tagged PDF, PDF/UA). Supports JPEG and PNG files (including indexed PNGs, and PNGs with transparency). In addition to PDFKit, you'll need somewhere to stream the output to. Note that in order to Browserify a project using PDFKit, you need to install the brfs module with npm, which is used to load built-in font data into the package.
  • 13
    ImageGear

    ImageGear

    Accusoft

    This document and image clean up and processing toolkit allows developers to quickly integrate document handling functions like image conversion, creation, editing, manipulation, compression, and image enhancement to their applications. ImageGear gives your application the ability to clean up files including deskew, line and speckle removal, and more. In addition, ImageGear’s color processing tools allow you to enhance image quality resulting in a reduction in compressed file sizes. This document and image processing SDK includes a variety of APIs that enable image clean up and processing. Add functionality to your applications, learn how you can meet all your document lifecycle needs with ImageGear. This PDF SDK allows .NET developers to add robust PDF functionality to an application. Users can view, convert, annotate, compress, redact, insert, remove, or reorder pages. Learn about all of the PDF manipulation capabilities and discover how ImageGear PDF can enhance your application.
  • 14
    RadaeePDF SDK

    RadaeePDF SDK

    RadaeePDF

    This is the well-known SDK for Android, iOS and Windows UWP. Our team began its development in early 2012 and starting from May-2012 and we have never stopped improving it since. RadaeePDF Classic includes fully customizable frameworks respectively written in Java, Objective-C and C#. We complete the range with simplified Cordova and Xamarin plugins (Android and iOS). RadaeePDF Classic SDK has been adopted by more than 6000 SMB and large corporations in more than 8500 applications. Some of its included features are PDF read, different rendering layouts, support of PDF annotations, text search and extraction and dozens more. The Master Edition represents a huge step forward compared to the previous Classic version, and introduces advanced features like complete form fields manipulation, pdf linearization and optimization, xfdf import/export, signature and certificate handling, and much more.
  • 15
    jPDFEditor

    jPDFEditor

    Qoppa Software

    jPDFEditor is intended for developers and integrators. For end-users, Qoppa Software offers PDF Studio, our advanced desktop PDF editor for Mac, Windows and Linux based on our same solid PDF technology. jPDFEditor can load documents from files on a local or network drive, from a URL and from Java input streams for documents that are generated runtime or come from other sources, such as a database. After editing documents, the library can save them. Features: -Display PDF files -Print PDF files -Convert text and image files (gif, png, jpg, tiff) to PDF on the fly -Fill and save interactive PDF forms -Markup PDFs (all PDF annotations and text markups supported) -Digitally sign PDF files -Content editing -Redaction -Optional OCR module -Optional Comparison module -Access jPDFProcess powerful PDF manipulation API -Text search, selection, copy -Easy navigation with thumbnail, bookmark, annotation, signature views -Advanced tools: zoom, loupe, snapshot, pan and zoom
  • 16
    jPDFWeb

    jPDFWeb

    Qoppa Software

    jPDFWeb is a Java library to convert PDF documents to SVG / HTML5. The library can save to the local file system or to an output stream to be able to serve the document directly to a client browser when working within a J2EE server. jPDFWeb is built on top of Qoppa’s proprietary PDF technology so you do not have to install any third party software or drivers. Since it is written in Java, it allows your application to remain platform independent and run on Windows, Linux, Unix (Solaris, HP UX, IBM AIX), Mac OS X and any other platform that supports the Java run-time environment. Features: -Convert PDF Documents to HTML5 / SVG -Convert Microsoft Word & Excel Documents to HTML5 (when combined with jOfficeConvert) -Convert Text -Convert Images -Convert Vector Graphics -Convert Annotations, Links and Form Field Data -Convert Digital Signature Validation Status -Export Page Thumbnails -Support for CJK fonts -Support for latest PDF format
  • 17
    jPDFPreflight

    jPDFPreflight

    Qoppa Software

    jPDFPreflight is a Java library to verify PDF compliance with different standards, including PDF/UA, PDF/A and PDF/X and to convert documents to these standards. jPDFPreflight can check compliance with the following profiles: -PDF/UA Verification -PDF/A-1b Verification -PDF/A-2b Verification -PDF/A-2u Verification -PDF/A-3b Verification -PDF/X-1a:2001 Verification -PDF/X-1a:2003 Verification -PDF/X-3:2002 Verification -PDF/X-3:2003 Verification (including ZUGFeRD) jPDFPreflight can convert existing PDF documents to make them compliant with the following profiles: -Convert from PDF to PDF/A-1b -Convert from PDF to PDF/A-2b -Convert from PDF to PDF/A-3b Features: -Verify compliance of PDF documents with several standards -Convert documents to make them PDF/A compliant -Produced detail report of all non-compliant items -Add annotations to documents to highlight non-compliant items -Works on Windows, Linux, Unix and Mac OS X (100% Java)
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