The best PDF editor depends on what you need to change

Adobe Acrobat is the best choice for forms and signatures: paid Acrobat Standard or Pro can create forms and edit text, and the free Acrobat Reader can fill in forms and sign. Preview on a Mac and Microsoft Edge's viewer also fill in forms. PublishMedia does not fill or create form fields or add e-signatures.

Publish Media Software (PublishMedia) is built for designed documents such as flyers, menus, newsletters and church bulletins. Each page opens in a page editor where text boxes, pictures and shapes can be moved, resized and changed in any browser, and paid plans export a print-ready PDF. Acrobat can also edit these, by paid subscription.

Preview (on every Mac), LibreOffice Draw (Windows, Mac and Linux) and the PDF viewer in Microsoft Edge cost nothing. Preview and Edge add text, drawings and form entries on top of a page; Draw can change existing text, one line at a time. Adobe Acrobat Reader is also free, but it views, comments, fills and signs rather than edits.

Look first at whether the software changes existing words or only adds new ones on top, because that splits the field in two. Then check whether it keeps the layout, handles scanned pages with OCR, runs on the devices you use, and charges in a way that suits how often you edit: subscription, one plan, or nothing.

Adobe Acrobat is worth paying for if you handle forms, signatures, scanned documents or long reports every week, because it covers all of them in one program. If you only fix a date on a flyer or a typo in a program a few times a month, a narrower tool such as Preview, LibreOffice Draw or PublishMedia is usually enough.

On Windows, Adobe Acrobat covers forms, signatures, OCR and in-place text edits, Microsoft Word 2013 and later converts text-heavy PDFs, Edge's viewer adds notes and fills forms, and LibreOffice Draw edits line by line at no cost. Publish Media Software (PublishMedia) runs in Edge or Chrome on Windows for changing designed pages without installing anything.

Publish Media Software (PublishMedia) and Adobe Acrobat on the web both run in Chrome on a Chromebook, since most desktop editors can't be installed there. Chromebooks can already open PDFs in the built-in Gallery app or Chrome for reading. PublishMedia opens and shows PDFs at no cost; editing and export need a paid plan.

Only PDF editors with OCR (optical character recognition) can change text on scanned pages, because a scan is a picture of a page. Adobe Acrobat includes OCR. PublishMedia's Make it editable option, on a paid plan, reads scanned pages with OCR; check the result, as complex pages may need touch-ups.

Acrobat can sign, build and fill forms, redact, combine, split, shrink and password-protect PDFs; PublishMedia handles none of those and has no phone app or offline mode. Those jobs belong in Adobe Acrobat, with redaction in Acrobat Pro. PublishMedia focuses on changing the words, pictures and layout of pages in a browser and exporting a print-ready PDF.

PublishMedia's free plan lets you open and view unlimited files in your browser, including PDFs up to 250 MB, with no credit card at sign-up. Files on the free plan are stored for 7 days and then deleted automatically, after a reminder email. Editing, templates, saving projects and PDF export are on the paid plans.