PDF-XChange Editor
Windows-only PDF editor with a large free tier and perpetual licences.
Operated by PDF-XChange Co Ltd
Opens the vendor's own site.
Jobs covered
Open a task to see exactly what the vendor documentation supports.
Edit
Browse all edit toolsediting PDFs with PDF-XChange Editor, where the product feature list documents overtype editing of existing text, typewriter and annotation tools, measurement annotations, page and bookmark editing, form filling and form-field creation, and document-content panes, and the vendor counts the Edit Documents category at 97 features with 40 licensed and 57 free, including the three Edit Document Text features; the scope records the documented existing-text overtype editing, object, annotation, page, bookmark and form operations on the Windows desktop application, makes no layout-fidelity guarantee and does not import developer SDK capabilities
Convert
Browse all convert toolsconverting documents with PDF-XChange Editor, where the product feature list documents converting PDF files to Microsoft Word, PDF/A, PDF/X, plain text, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint and WebP images, and converting CSV files, image files, Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Visio and Word documents, Markdown, RTF, text files, Windows metafiles and XPS files to PDF; the scope records those documented conversion directions in the installed Windows application, makes no fidelity guarantee and claims no conversion direction that is not in the list
OCR
Browse all ocr toolsrunning OCR with PDF-XChange Editor, where the product feature list documents performing OCR on documents, OCR of a selected region, OCR of multiple selected images from the context menu, the Enhanced OCR Plugin, and using OCR to recognise characters when converting PDFs to Microsoft Office formats; the vendor says Editor Plus supplies the Enhanced OCR engine while the regular Editor has a default OCR engine. OCR language support is added through the Add/update Languages function and language packs.
The scope records the documented OCR surfaces and the Editor versus Editor Plus engine difference, and makes no accuracy or language-completeness guarantee because no fixed supported-language total or accuracy figure is published on the pages read
Sign
Browse all sign toolssigning PDFs with PDF-XChange Editor, where the product feature list documents PAdES-compliant digital signatures, certification, timestamps, long-term validation for digital signatures, signature fields, signing and saving automatically, and detecting conformity with EU 910/2014; it also documents a separate visual Type Your Signature feature and the FreeSign tool for adding signatures and initials. The scope records both the certificate-based PAdES signing, certification, timestamp and long-term-validation path and the visual signature path, and makes no certificate-authority issuance, trust-validation or independent legal-validity guarantee beyond the vendor documented capabilities
Compress
Browse all compress toolscompressing and optimising PDFs with PDF-XChange Editor, where the product feature list documents Save as Optimized, the Optimize Document enhancements that include optimising images in comments and flattening fields and markup comments, and recompressing document images and rasterising pages; the scope records those documented optimisation operations in the installed Windows application and makes no lossless, fidelity or specific percentage-reduction guarantee because the vendor pages read do not state one
Where your files are processed
Mixed - depends on version and feature
The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: PDF-XChange Editor on Windows. On their servers: Optional AI providers. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
Desktop core processing happens on the machine, and that is a statement about the desktop application rather than about the product as a whole: the optional AI features send data to configured providers, and the network behaviour has not been tested. Installed or portable architecture is not used here to assert that no vendor service or network traffic exists.
What it does
PDF-XChange Editor is a Windows desktop PDF editor from PDF-XChange Co Ltd, with Tracker Software Products as its wholly owned subsidiary. The current version is 11.1.0.0 and it supports Windows 10 and later; there are 32-bit, 64-bit, ARM64 and portable builds.
The vendor counts 402 features, of which 257 are free and 145 licensed, and says about 70 per cent of functionality is unrestricted. The editor covers overtype editing of existing text, annotation and measurement tools, bookmarks and page manipulation, form filling and creation, conversion to and from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF/A, PDF/X, WebP and other formats, OCR of documents and selected regions, PAdES digital signatures with certification, timestamps and long-term validation, document comparison, save-as-optimised compression and the FreeSign signature tool.
Editor costs GBP 48.00 plus VAT and Editor Plus GBP 61.00 plus VAT, each with the first year of maintenance. Core processing is local; optional AI Assistant features use third-party models only when the user supplies an API key, and cloud-storage integrations are optional.
Best for
Windows users who want a capable desktop editor with a substantial documented free feature set and the option to license the rest.
Worth knowing
Windows 10 or later only. The current version is 11.1.0.0 and the current single-user prices are GBP 48.00 for Editor and GBP 61.00 for Editor Plus, plus VAT, each including the first year of maintenance; the previously recorded GBP 47.00 and GBP 60.00 figures and the 11.0.1.0 version are superseded.
There are no refunds once a licence key is issued. In evaluation mode, licensed features can be used but output carries a watermark that cannot be removed without a licence; free features are not universally watermarked, so the free-watermark position is conditional rather than uniform.
The vendor says more than seventy per cent of features are free, which is an approximate vendor statement rather than a measured score, and the 145 licensed features include the Editor Plus Enhanced OCR engine, fillable-form creation and editing, dynamic stamps, document comparison, Identify Forms and Add Placeholder. Digital signatures are PAdES-compliant and the editor can certify documents, add timestamps and perform long-term validation; the record makes no certificate-authority issuance or independent legal-validity guarantee.
Visual signatures and the FreeSign tool are separate from certificate-based signing. OCR is available in the Editor with the default engine and in Editor Plus with the Enhanced OCR engine; language support is added through the Add/update Languages function and language packs, and no accuracy guarantee is made.
Conversion covers the documented Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF/A, PDF/X, plain-text and WebP exports and the documented CSV, image, Office, Publisher, Visio, Markdown, RTF, text, metafile and XPS imports, with no fidelity guarantee. Save as Optimized, recompressing images and rasterising are documented, but no lossless or percentage-reduction guarantee is made.
Core editing, OCR and conversion are local; optional AI Assistant features use third-party OpenAI, Anthropic or Google models only when the user supplies an API key, and cloud-storage integrations are optional, so those network paths are not covered by the local-processing claim.
Details, and where each comes from
Vendor statements, our own reading of their pages, and the things nobody has established yet, each answered separately. Where we have not confirmed something it says so rather than guessing, and a row nobody has established is greyed out.
- Versions covered
- Windows
- Website
- pdf-xchange.com
- Requires an account
- No
- Free tier
- Yes
- Watermark on the free tier
- Not verified
- Maximum file size
- Not verified
- Batch processing
- Not verified
- Data residency
- Not verified
- Open source
- No
- Self-hostable
- No
- Licence
-
Proprietary, perpetual per-user licence.
Proprietary, perpetual per-user licence. PDF-XChange Co Ltd is the company named on the product and licensing pages, and the site footer says Tracker Software Products is a wholly owned subsidiary of PDF-XChange Co Ltd, registered in England under number 11091579.
End-user licensing is per user, with no concurrent usage, and allows one desktop installation plus a secondary device for the primary user. The Single User Editor licence is GBP 48.00 plus VAT and the Editor Plus licence is GBP 61.00 plus VAT, each including the first year of maintenance; extended maintenance is optional.
The vendor says it does not offer refunds after the release of licence keys. Editor Plus adds the Enhanced OCR engine, fillable-form creation and editing, dynamic stamps, document comparison, Identify Forms and Add Placeholder.
The free edition and evaluation mode can use licensed features but place watermarks on output, and evaluation watermarks cannot be removed without a licence. No open-source licence is published.
- Redaction
- Not determined
- Programmatic access
- None
- Last availability check
- Responded in 626 ms 21 October 2026
Checked automatically by our own runner, not reported by the vendor. 100% of our last 30 checks got a response.
Why we have not determined this
What that does not establish
Downgraded from removes_content on 2026-09-22. The vendor’s manual is JavaScript-only at both the current and the previous URL, and neither is archived, so we could not read any statement about the mechanism.
The guide’s tier note separately records that redaction is a paid feature and is absent from the free version - a fact about the edition, not about whether content is removed.
What the vendor says
Claims are labelled rather than repeated as fact. Where we have checked something ourselves, it says so and shows when. Checked means we read the vendor's own page and it says what we recorded - not that we tested the behaviour, unless the note says we did.
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“Download the free version and test out the software - 70% of features are unrestricted.”
Checked by us - the source says this Read 22 September 2026
Confirmed verbatim: the sentence appears unaltered in the page's download prompt. The sentence below it is the one a buyer needs and the claim omits it: there are two licence tiers, PDF-XChange Editor and PDF-XChange Editor Plus, and the extra features "are not available in an unrestricted capacity with a regular PDF-XChange Editor license".
So the 70% figure describes the free version, and the remaining 30% is not simply unlocked by the cheapest paid licence - some of it sits behind Editor Plus. A reader who took "70% free, buy to get the rest" would be wrong about the middle tier.
Recorded as the vendor's own wording; no download was made and no control was run.
Standing: Re-read: the text is unchanged, but the page publishes values that move
Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
- From
- the text a browser renders
- SHA-256
- 1cb98e4dc99f57e520bfb8e97289ebc1c198f1599e090ae70d7299c34881f584
How we checked
Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-21. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-www-pdf-xchange-com-product-pdf-xchange-editor-0310a7c8.txt.
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“PDF-XChange Editor has more than 400 features”
Checked by us - the source says this Read 22 September 2026
Confirmed verbatim: the sentence continues "that you can use to perform a huge range of operations on PDF documents, as detailed below". "More than 400 features" is a count the vendor publishes and a reader cannot easily check; the page does not enumerate them in a countable form on this page.
It is worth reading beside the same page's "70% of features are unrestricted" claim recorded earlier, because the two use the same underlying feature list for different purposes - one to impress, one to describe a trial. Recorded as the vendor's wording.
Standing: Re-read: the text is unchanged, but the page publishes values that move
Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
- From
- the text a browser renders
- SHA-256
- 1cb98e4dc99f57e520bfb8e97289ebc1c198f1599e090ae70d7299c34881f584
How we checked
Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-21. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-www-pdf-xchange-com-product-pdf-xchange-editor-0310a7c8.txt.
Each claim is quoted from the vendor's own pages. This section describes what we have and have not checked - it is not a judgement about anyone.
Sponsorship is distribution, not an endorsement or a promise of search rankings, AI citations, traffic, or sales. This listing is a free entry, compiled from published sources.
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