| Fact |  PDFgearFree PDF editor for Mac with no account and no paid tier |  UPDFOne payment, four devices, Mac and phone on the same licence |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $79.99 |
| Licence | FreewareNothing to buy | Lifetime tierA one-time plan of a subscription app |
| The catch | Closed source with no stated business model, so nothing guarantees it stays free | The AI Assistant is a separate US$69/year subscription, not part of the lifetime licence |
| Against a subscription | Replaces Adobe Acrobat Pro$240 a year | 4 monthsAgainst Adobe Acrobat Pro at $240 a year |
| Seats | not established | 4 MacsFour devices in total across macOS, Windows, iOS and Android, not four Macs, and web access counts against the four. |
| Developer account | None needed | Required |
| Works offline | Partly | Partly |
| Apple Silicon | not established | Native |
| Free trial | does not apply | Yes |
| On Setapp | No | No |
| Get it | Buy direct |
Both prices read 22 Sep 2026, on the pages these buttons open. Minimum macOS and App Store rating are not established for either app, so those rows are left out.
In their own right
PDFgear
Edits text inside finished PDFs, converts to and from Office formats, merges, splits, signs and OCRs — and asks for nothing: no licence, no account, no watermark. The app to try before you spend money on PDF editing.
UPDF
An Acrobat-style PDF editor covering editing, OCR, conversion, forms, redaction and compression. Normally sold yearly, but the lifetime licence is a genuine one-time purchase that includes future version upgrades.