Alternatives to PDF Candy
PDF Candy is cheap, browser-based and covers a wide set of jobs, and it is one of the tools where the redaction wording does not survive inspection: the evidence we hold says it draws over content rather than removing it. If redaction is not why you are here, the alternatives below are broadly comparable. If it is, the verdicts in the table are the only column that matters.
PDF Candy, as the index records it
- Files:
- Mixed - depends on version and feature
- Redaction:
- Covers it - content is not removed
- Price:
- Free · paid from £4.00 a month
- Platforms:
- Web · Windows
Worth knowing before you stay or go: The browser tools upload the file to PDF Candy's servers, which the vendor says are deleted within two hours, with no backups; a share link is available for seven days. Free use is capped by page and hourly limits, a limited file size, no batch processing and a desktop operations limit, while the 500 MB per-task figure, no hourly limits and priority processing are paid allowances rather than product-wide free maximums. The recorded GBP 4 per month is the displayed monthly equivalent of the Desktop + Web Yearly plan, which is billed annually against a listed GBP 18 per month; Web Monthly is GBP 6 per month and the Desktop + Web Lifetime plan is GBP 99 one-off, so a monthly-billing reader should not take GBP 4 as the monthly price. The offline Windows edition is a distinction rather than a guarantee of tool parity with the web service: the desktop app is PDF Candy Desktop 3.20 with 35+ tools, while the web service advertises more than ninety and the About page says 98. Whiteout is not permanent redaction; our own test of the whiteout tool left the canary text in the PDF text layer under a white rectangle, and the vendor describes whiteout as hiding content. The signing tool adds a text, freehand or image signature and does not document a certificate-based digital signature. The OCR page documents scanned-page recognition without a language list or count and without an accuracy figure. The regions statement is supported by the security page's EU and USA server statement, and the operator address in Cyprus is not used as evidence of processing location.
The short answer
The closest PDF Candy alternatives in this index are Adobe Acrobat , Foxit PDF Editor and PDF Studio . They share enough of the job to be worth comparing, which is why they are on this page - a shared job tag is a candidate, not a finding that they work the same way. What separates them from PDF Candy is what they charge and whether your file leaves your machine. PDF Candy processes some versions on your device and runs others on a server, which the vendor documents, and 2 of the 6 listed have no vendor service in the path .
What else does the same jobs
7 or more of the same jobs, ordered by how many jobs they share - not by who pays us.
| Tool | Price | Licence | Your files | Redaction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adobe Acrobat 7 jobs in common: Edit, Convert, Compress, Merge, OCR, Protect, Sign | Free · paid from £14.99 a month | Not verified | Mixed - depends on version and feature | Removes the content |
| Foxit PDF Editor 7 jobs in common: Edit, Protect, OCR, Convert, Merge, Sign, Compress | From £8.15 a month | Not verified | Mixed - depends on version and feature | Removes the content |
| PDF Studio 7 jobs in common: Edit, Merge, Protect, Sign, Convert, OCR, Compress | Paid | Proprietary | No server involved | Removes the content |
| Power PDF 7 jobs in common: Edit, Protect, Convert, Sign, Merge, OCR, Compress | From £95.00 one-off | proprietary | Mixed - depends on version and feature | Not determined |
| Master PDF Editor 7 jobs in common: Edit, Merge, Protect, Convert, Sign, OCR, Compress | From £59.30 one-off | proprietary | Mixed - depends on version and feature | Removes the content |
| PDFsam 7 jobs in common: Merge, Compress, Edit, Convert, Sign, OCR, Protect | Free · paid from £29.00 a year | PDFsam Basic is free… | No server involved | Removes the content |
A tool marked same owner is operated by the same company as PDF Candy. That does not make it bad, but it is not an independent alternative - switching to it does not change who holds your documents or sets your terms.
2 of the 6 are desktop or command-line software, so there is no server in the path at all - PDF Studio, PDFsam. That is a statement about how the software is built rather than something we measured, which is why the files column words it differently from a tool we tested.