Adobe Acrobat on Windows is £15.17/month. For a tool most users open once a week, that's £180/year for occasional convenience. Windows ships Edge, which is genuinely good at PDFs. And Flint covers the bits Edge can't.
Edge covers more than you think
Edge's PDF tools include annotation, highlighting, drawing, signing with mouse or pen, and form filling. Combined with Microsoft Print to PDF (which makes PDFs from any app), that's most basic PDF workflows already free.
The gap: editing existing text in a PDF. That's where Acrobat's £15/month justifies itself — unless you've got Flint.
Flint fills the gap
Flint edits real text in the browser. Converts to Word, compresses smartly, redacts properly, password-protects, unlocks. All the Acrobat features people actually use, in a browser tab.
When Acrobat is still worth it
Heavy professional workflows: certified digital signatures with timestamping, complex forms with calculations, accessibility tagging for compliance, batch automation across hundreds of files. If those are your work, Acrobat earns its money. If not, save the subscription.
Free alternatives compared
Microsoft Store free editors typically nag for upgrades, watermark output, or limit features. Open-source tools (PDFsam, Sumatra) are powerful but UI-heavy. Browser-based (Flint) is the easiest path — no install, immediate use, free for individuals.
FAQ
What's the catch with free PDF editors?
Most Store apps have catches — watermarks, page limits, sign-in walls. Flint is genuinely free for individual use without those tricks. Pro tier exists for heavy use but doesn't gate basic features.
Can I edit forms without Acrobat?
Edge fills standard form fields. Flint edits underlying text in forms. Creating new interactive forms (with calculations, scripts) needs specialised tools. Simple form filling and editing work fine in either.
Will my organisation accept browser-edited PDFs?
Yes — Flint produces standard PDF files. Recipients open them in any reader (Acrobat, Edge, Preview) and see the edits as part of the document. No way to tell the file was edited in a browser vs. desktop app.
Cancel Acrobat. Edit PDFs in Edge plus Flint. Save £180 a year.