Adobe Acrobat is what PDF looked like in 1993.
We rebuilt it for 2026.

Ten things, no marketing fluff

Where we beat Acrobat.

1. 01

   Browser-native, zero install.

   Acrobat Pro is a gigabyte of desktop install that takes a minute to launch. Pditor opens in a second. The web version of Acrobat scores ~38 on Lighthouse mobile; we score 98. Speed shows up in how long you wait for the page, not just for the file.

2. 02

   Priced like a streaming service.

   $2.99 / month annual vs Acrobat Pro Individual at $19.99 / month. That's nearly seven times cheaper. We can do this because we're built with one engineering team in 2026, not thirty years of acquisition-driven sprawl.

3. 03

   AI is included, not a $4.99 / mo add-on.

   Acrobat's AI Assistant is a separate paywall on top of Pro — with a file-size cap and locked to one provider. Our AI Actions (Rewrite, Translate, Summarize, Explain) are in the free tier, with sensible quotas. The Pro plan removes the quotas entirely.

4. 04

   AI that edits the document, not a sidebar.

   Acrobat's AI shows you an answer in a side panel; you copy-paste it back. Our inline AI mutations fill the text input you're already editing — one keystroke commits the change to the actual PDF, through the same pipeline as a manual edit.

5. 05

   PDF → Word that recovers structure.

   Most PDF→Word converters dump the page as one block of text. We use per-glyph layout analysis to detect paragraph breaks, heading levels, and font-size jumps. A typical receipt or invoice comes out as a structured document, not a wall of text.

6. 06

   Redaction that actually removes the bytes.

   Many tools draw a black box over text and call it redaction — but the words are still in the file, searchable in any text editor. We rewrite the page's content stream to remove the matched text, then stamp the black box. AI-PII detection finds emails, phones, SSN-shaped numbers, and credit cards automatically.

7. 07

   Files auto-delete by default.

   Acrobat's default is to keep everything in your Adobe Cloud account forever (you're paying for that storage). Our free tier deletes uploads after 60 minutes; Pro after 15. You don't have to remember to clean up; we clean up for you.

8. 08

   One editor, every tool inside it.

   Acrobat treats "Acrobat Pro" and "Acrobat Online" as overlapping products with different feature sets. Our editor (`/edit`) has every standalone tool wired into its left rail — drop a PDF once, do everything from one place.

9. 09

   Modern keyboard surface.

   ⌘K to find a tool, ⌘K inside the editor to apply one, ⌘Z to undo any edit, arrow keys to nudge overlays. Acrobat's keyboard story dates from the era of menubars; ours is built for people who live in the keyboard.

10. 10

    Provider-agnostic AI.

    We route across multiple AI providers — if one raises prices, we move; if one is faster, we lean on it. Acrobat is locked to one provider and you pay whatever Adobe negotiates with them. Your AI bill is our problem to optimize, not yours.

Honesty

Where we don't catch up — yet.

Acrobat has a thirty-year head start on a handful of features that matter to specific users. Today we're behind on forms (AcroForm / XFA), accessibility tagging (PDF/UA, structure trees), and print pre-flight / color management. If you live in any of those, stay on Acrobat — we'll catch up in the Business / Enterprise tier over the next few releases. For the work most people Google a PDF tool for, we're already the right answer.

See the full head-to-head on the vs-Acrobat page — including what we won't be doing any time soon.