PDFgear — The Complete Guide: Free PDF Editing with No Sign-Up and No Watermark
PDFgear is a PDF editor for Windows and macOS, with mobile apps and online tools. It allows what most free tools block: editing text and images that are already in the file. There is no sign-up, no ads, no watermark, and at present no paid tier at all — not even for business use.
PDFgear
PDFgear
Free PDF editor with no sign-up and no watermark: edit existing text, OCR, convert, merge and sign.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Editing existing content — fix a number in a specification or a line in a letter that arrived only as a PDF.
- Comments and stamps — highlights, notes and stamps on documents and drawings.
- Forms and signing — fill in forms and sign them.
- OCR — text recognition on scans in more than 30 languages.
- Conversion and page tools — to and from Word, Excel and PowerPoint, plus merge, split and compress.
What runs locally and what goes to the cloud
Core work in the desktop program is done on your computer. Some advanced conversions and the AI chat with a document, however, go through cloud servers, and the online tools upload your files. For sensitive documents, stick to the local operations. It is proprietary software, not open source, and the vendor has said some advanced cloud and AI features may become paid in future, with no timeline.
Related tools
For editing existing text in the browser and on Linux too, within limits — Sejda PDF. For markup and measuring on drawings in Windows — PDF-XChange Editor. For an open-source editor on Windows and Linux — PDF4QT.
Sejda PDF
Sejda BV
Browser and desktop PDF editor that edits existing text for free, plus dozens of page, convert and OCR tools within hourly or daily limits.
Get it from the vendor
PDF-XChange Editor
PDF-XChange Co. Ltd
Fast Windows PDF editor where most annotation, measuring and page tools are free; licensed features add a watermark.
Get it from the vendor
PDF4QT
Jakub Melka
An open PDF editor and viewer — annotations, page organising, signing, redaction, plus a tool to compare document versions.
Get it from the vendor
PDF24 Creator / PDF24 Tools
Geek Software GmbH
Free PDF toolbox: an offline Windows program plus a browser version — merge, split, compress, OCR, convert and a PDF printer.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
Right now the most complete free editor for fixing content inside a PDF. Keep an eye on the licence terms, as the vendor does not promise everything will stay free.