Power PDF
Office-style PDF editor where genuine redaction needs the Advanced tier.
Operated by Tungsten Automation Corporation
Where your files are processed
Mixed — depends on version and feature
The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: Power PDF Standard, Advanced and Mac editions. On their servers: Business cloud editor, Teams and configured AI services. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
It depends on the edition and the feature. The installed Standard, Advanced and Mac editions work on files on the machine, while the Business cloud editor, Teams collaboration and any configured AI services are separate surfaces that send data to their services. Multiple-region residency needs a service-specific source for that cloud and AI processing. The Advanced redaction is documented as permanent removal, but that is a vendor statement rather than independently verified compliant output, and multiple-region residency is not a family-wide property.
What it does
A PDF editor built around a Microsoft Office-style ribbon and sold by Tungsten Automation, formerly Kofax. It creates PDFs from any printable application and from Office add-ins, edits and converts to and from Word, Excel and PowerPoint, runs OCR, fills and designs forms, applies watermarks, Bates numbering, passwords, certificates and digital signatures, and integrates with SharePoint and iManage. The Business edition adds a browser-based cloud editor and a Teams app.
Best for: Windows-centric business and legal teams that want Acrobat-style editing and compliant redaction under a one-time licence rather than a subscription.
Worth knowing: Redaction is an Advanced feature — buying Standard leaves it out entirely, which is easy to miss given the £95 headline. The vendor's own manual also documents a flattening option that covers text without redacting it, which is a trap. Retail Standard, Advanced and Mac editions offer perpetual licences while Business supports subscription and negotiated options, so one-time licensing is not a family-wide rule. Native macOS is a separate edition, and web availability on mobile is not evidence of native iOS or Android apps. The documented fifteen-day retail evaluation is recorded, with the vendor stating that all features are available and the duration is the limitation, without claiming an independently inspected watermark-free export. The Advanced redaction and covering or flattening distinction is preserved.
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
- Web · Windows · macOS · iOS · Android
- Website
- tungstenautomation.com
- Requires an account
- Not verified
- Free tier
- No
- Watermark on trial output
- Not verified
- Maximum file size
- Not verified
- Batch processing
- Yes
- Data residency
- Multiple regions
- Open source
- No
- Self-hostable
- No
- Licence
- proprietary
- Redaction
- Not determined
- Programmatic access
- None
- Last availability check
- Responded in 778 ms 16 October 2026
Checked automatically by our own runner, not reported by the vendor. 96.7% of our last 30 checks got a response.
Why we have not determined this
“A key concept is that Deletion is not equal to Redaction. The information you delete from a PDF with the Delete command is not actually cleared from the document permanently and can almost always be recovered. … Redaction lets users sanitize PDF documents they want to release.”
What that does not establish: Downgraded from removes_content on 2026-09-22. The vendor’s own definition is "the blacking out of sensitive text or pictures from a PDF file", and the page never states that the marked content leaves the file. It does warn, correctly, that the Delete command is not redaction — which is a different distinction from promising removal. ALSO WEAKER THAN THE VERDICT IMPLIES. The page’s own definition is covering language — "Redaction is the blacking out of sensitive text or pictures from a PDF file" — and it never states that the marked content leaves the file. It does draw the right distinction in the negative, warning that the Delete command is not redaction. Power PDF Advanced only, on the Security tab. Should be tested or downgraded.
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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“A key concept is that Deletion is not equal to Redaction. The information you delete from a PDF with the Delete command is not actually cleared from the document permanently and can almost always be recovered.”
Checked by us — the source says this Read 22 September 2026
Confirmed verbatim. Under a heading that reads "Important", the page says: "A key concept is that Deletion is not equal to Redaction. The information you delete from a PDF with the Delete command is not actually cleared from the document permanently and can almost always be recovered." The claim is those two sentences unchanged. This is the strongest kind of entry this index can hold, because it is not a product claim at all — it is the vendor warning users that the obvious alternative to redaction does not work, which is the proposition the index exists to put in front of people. Three things about the page belong with it. First, redaction here is a paid-tier feature: "Redaction is available in Power PDF Advanced on the Security tab", and "Remove elements", which strips hidden or background information, is listed as a separate feature rather than as redaction. Second, the model is two-step in the vendor's own words — "It is usually a two-step process: first you select and mark items to be removed, then after re-checking you apply the redaction" — matching Bluebeam, Nutrient and PDF Architect. Third, the page's flattening section describes the exact failure this index warns about, giving two outcomes side by side: one where black rectangles cover redacted text and "redaction remains intact", and one where rectangles cover text marked for redaction "but it is not actually redacted; the rectangles can be selected and moved, but then the underlying text or object becomes visible, so no redaction has been performed". It also concedes that embedded indexes "may still contain redacted text strings", which is why removing non-display data is offered alongside redaction. Recorded as the vendor's description, not as an observation: no control was run.
Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte
Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
- From
- the text a browser renders
- SHA-256
- 78f0af1bd590fcb964f8cd91faa3f90b58c65216cf967cf71675ef16bc9ef730
How we checked: Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://docshield.tungstenautomation.com/PowerPDF/en_US/3.1.0_llem1i5177/help/About_Redaction_and_Document_Inspection.htm 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-docshield-tungstenautomation-com-PowerPDF-en-US-3-1-0-llem-adac29af.txt.
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“Break Free from Adobe's Price Hikes and Save up to 60%”
Checked by us — the source says this Read 22 September 2026
Confirmed verbatim: the line is the page's own headline, unaltered. The "up to 60%" is doing the work and the page does not say 60% of what — no reference price, no basis and no comparison table appear, so the figure cannot be checked from this page or acted on by a buyer without asking. It is a competitive claim aimed at Adobe Acrobat specifically, which is the same target as PDF Studio's "1/3 the price" claim verified in this batch and ABBYY's Acrobat capability comparison; three vendors in one tier positioning against the same incumbent, none of them publishing the numbers behind the comparison. Recorded as the vendor's wording; no purchase was made and no control was run.
Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte
Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
- From
- the text a browser renders
- SHA-256
- 587e27c94b221bf0b117980cd9d89c2e57cecd3e53333a62d3a3c697d6146f3c
How we checked: Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://www.tungstenautomation.com/products/power-pdf 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-tungstenautomation-com-products-power-pdf-f3f2ca1e.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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