MAC PDF Reader - Looking for Recommendations

I like PDF Expert but I’m not paying that kind of money for it. I’ll use Preview for basic things and the PDF annotation capabilities in DEVONthink instead of paying a subscription for a PDF editor. No need to respond to this next statement, it has been beat to death, but I’m going to say it anyway. While I appreciate the benefits of subscriptions, I believe they are getting out of hand. I will not “rent” all of my applications.

6 Likes

Now that Microsoft Word can open PDFs (and then re-save as PDF once edited), it kind of fills this gap well.

I’m not sure they’ve added anything worth upgrading for? A different UI design but that seems to be it.

I think OCR is their main new feature. Not worth the asking price at all.

I thought version 2 didn’t have it on the Mac, I don’t have it installed anymore to check. OCR was only available in Readdle’s Scanner Pro.

Are you talking about PDF Expert? Maybe conversations crossed!

With the improved GUI in PDFPen Pro 13, I have returned to using PDFPen as my default on my MBP and iPad. While I prefer PDF Expert’s GUI, I’ve decided to return to PDFPen as my default:

  1. Because I refuse to pay a subscription for my PDF editor, which will eventually be necessary with PDF Expert Pro,
  2. The GUI in PDFPen 13 on the Mac is better,
  3. The feature set in PDFPen Pro on the Mac is better than PDF Expert’s, and
  4. I already had PDFPen Pro 12 so my upgrade price was only $35.

The subscription is only needed for the iOS/iPad version afaik. Makes quite a difference if you “only” need the Mac app.

PDF Expert is full on subscription now.

I must be missing something then.

Same in the Mac Appstore b.t.w.

The Pro version is a subscription, $50/year.

That’s PDF Expert 7. Which is for iOS.

PDF Expert on the Mac is version 2.x.x

Yes, that is correct. I do much of my PDF work on the iPad so the subscription issue is relevant for my workflow. I’m not going to spend $50/year to edit/sign PDF’s on my iPad. :slight_smile:

This is what I get:

went to PDF Editor and Reader for Mac | Free Trial | PDF Expert and clicked ‘Buy Now’

Is that for the Mac version? I must say that the website and pricing is confusing.

Interesting. I got my screenshot from the exact same page.

As @Bmosbacker says, it’s confusing.

Definitely Mac version, selecting iPhone / iPad links out to the app store

1 Like

Smile release a new version of PDFPen every year in April or May and charge an upgrade price. In effect it’s an annual subscription if you want to keep on the latest version, but at least it keeps working if you choose not to upgrade. I’d put off upgrading from 11 to 12 until last month so at least I get 13 included in the 11-12 upgrade.

I have PDFPen 13 (not Pro) via SetApp. It’s ok. (Lowercase ok. Not meh, but nothing to praise.)

After reading this thread I decided it was time to update my PDFPenPro from 9 to 13. No reason to upgrade each year but this new interface is nice and it seems to be a much faster program now as well. I can see using this as my PDF reader now although I’ve been happy with Preview. I like to keep things lightweight and rarely need markup/editing on PDF files. PDFPenPro has mainly been used for its OCR capability.

I decided to buy the upgrade because of the trend toward subscriptions, which Smile already did for TextExpander. With the change to subscriptions for PDFExpert, I figure PDFPen can’t be far behind.

And to add to the list of possible programs to use as PDF readers/editors, I discovered that Affinity Publisher does a good job although it is certainly overkill for this. Bought on sale, it was $25 one-time purchase (they claim free updates forever).

I just purchased Affinity Photo, a great deal–thanks for the tip!