Acrobat Pro is £150-200 a year. You need to edit a PDF once a quarter. The maths doesn't work.
Most PDF editing tasks don't need Acrobat. The few that do are rare. Here's what works without it.
Editing text and images
Free browser-based editors handle text edits, image insertion, page operations, and form fields. Flint's editor covers all of that.
What you give up: some advanced typography controls, specific colour profile handling, and integrations with Adobe's other tools. For most users, none of that matters.
Pages: merge, split, reorder, rotate
These are the most common PDF tasks and they're all free across multiple tools. Merge, split, reorder, rotate, delete pages — none need Acrobat.
Browser-based versions are often faster than Acrobat for these tasks because they don't require launching a heavyweight app.
Signing and security
Digital signatures work in Flint. Password protection too. Redaction for sensitive content.
These were Acrobat's strongest features five years ago. Browser tools have caught up.
Conversion
PDF to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, JPG, PNG — all free. Flint covers PDF to Word, PDF to Excel, PDF to PowerPoint, and more.
Quality on free tools matches paid for most documents. Complex layouts (heavily-styled magazines, technical PDFs with embedded fonts) may still favour paid tools.
FAQ
What can't free PDF editors do?
Very niche operations: PDF/A archival validation, specific accessibility audits at the level of WCAG AAA, certain print preflight workflows. For 95% of users, those aren't needed.
Are free PDF editors secure?
Browser-based editors that process files locally (like Flint) never upload your PDF. Check the tool's privacy story — "processes in your browser" is what you want.
Will edits made in a free tool work in Acrobat?
Yes. PDFs are a standard format. Free editors output standard PDFs that any reader, including Acrobat, opens correctly.
What about big PDFs?
Browser tools handle big files. Multi-hundred MB PDFs may slow down — at that point, splitting first speeds things up.
Acrobat's not the only way. Flint covers the editing, pages, signing, and conversion most users need — free, in a browser.