Acrobat Pro's redaction tool is excellent. It's also locked behind a $239/year subscription, on top of whatever else Adobe sells you. For occasional redaction work, that's overkill.
Flint does the same operation — strip underlying content, apply black mark — without the subscription.
The redaction operation is identical
Whether you redact in Acrobat or Flint, the result is the same: text streams within the marked area are removed, a black mark is overlaid, the saved file has no recoverable content in redacted regions. PDF readers see the redacted file as a normal PDF with black bars in certain places.
What Acrobat has that Flint doesn't
Acrobat has find-by-regex with a longer history of presets (SSN, credit card, common ID formats baked in). Flint supports custom regex but doesn't ship with as many presets. For most users, this means typing a regex once instead of clicking a preset — five seconds of difference.
What Flint has that Acrobat doesn't
Browser-based — no install, no admin rights needed on locked-down machines. No account required. Files never upload — they stay in your browser. Free for any reasonable use volume. Works on any device with a modern browser.
When to use which
Daily redaction work as part of legal practice: Acrobat earns its keep. Occasional redaction for everyday documents: Flint. Both produce court-grade redactions when used correctly.
FAQ
Is Flint's redaction as 'good' as Acrobat's?
Functionally yes. The output meets the same standard — underlying text removed, copy-paste returns nothing.
Can I redact and password protect without Acrobat?
Yes. Redact in Flint, then add a password to the redacted output.
What about batch redaction?
Both tools do one file at a time interactively. For batched redaction across many files, command-line tools (pdftk + a scripting language) handle scale.
Do I need to register for Flint?
No. Open the page, redact, download. No account ever required for basic use.
Same redaction standard, no subscription. Redact without Acrobat.