9 best AI PDF editors in 2023 [In-depth review]

Productivity Boost

Jackson Kustec

jackson@macro.com

Published: Fri Sep 22 2023

This year, some of the best AI PDF editors to try are Macro, UPDF, Foxit PDF Editor, PDFgear, LightPDF, PDFelement, Forma, PDFfiller, and HiPDF.

This article discusses their features, pricing, and the benefits of using AI PDF editors over traditional ones.

What are the best AI PDF editors?

Integrating AI with PDF editors has led to a new era of efficiency and intelligent document handling.

With AI, people can now automate data extraction from PDFs, which used to be a manual process. AI helps professionals understand and analyze complex documentation like legal contracts and financial reports, highlighting critical information or identifying trends.

Let’s look at some of the top AI PDF editing software currently available on the market 👇

#1. Macro

Macro is an AI-powered PDF editor that you can use to draft, review, and edit PDFs.

The world’s top banks, law firms, investors, and Fortune 500 companies trust Macro.

Macro's AI helps you write, review, and edit more efficiently without the risk of making factual errors.

Macro AI editing features

Macro AI automatically generates bookmarks to increase PDF navigation speed.

AI-powered error detection helps avoid mistakes when writing and finalizing PDFs.

Double-check facts and rewrite sections with AI.
Summarize long documents to understand what the PDF is about.
Native ChatGPT 4 integration to ask questions when drafting or editing documents.

Other editing features

Click on the hyperlinked terms and find out their definitions without leaving Macro.

Compare multiple documents, finalize edits, and prepare the final version in minutes.

Has optical character recognition (OCR) functionality to help you copy PDF text from non-readable documents.

Pricing

Macro’s free plan offers various AI capabilities you can leverage to edit PDFs. You can download the Macro app for Mac or Windows and use it for free.

If you want a full-fledged document workspace and unlimited ChatGPT access, upgrade to Macro's Professional version ( $49/user per month).

The software also offers customized plans for Enterprises with dedicated customer support, enterprise security, and compliance.

#2. UPDF

With just over a million users, UPDF's AI-powered PDF editor is a terrific software for working with PDFs. The tool can help you annotate, edit, convert, translate, or chat with your PDF.

Furthermore, access it from anywhere and on any device. Whether iOS, Android, Mac, or Windows, UPDF AI works fine across all platforms.

UPDF’s AI editing features

Helps squeeze lengthy or data-filled PDFs into easy-to-read summaries in 30 seconds or less.
Edit PDF content – use UPDF to brainstorm ideas, check grammar, and polish content.
UPDF has AI-powered OCR tech to convert paper documents into searchable and editable PDF files.
It comes with a ChatGPT-powered AI bot that lets you talk to your PDF. Use it to gather knowledge about the PDF’s content as you’re working on it.

Other Editing Features

Change text size, font, color, and more with UPDF without altering the document’s format.
Has annotation tools to highlight, underline, or redact text for confidentiality.

Pricing

UPDF offers a 14-day free trial with all its plans. The UPDF AI comes as an add-on that you can buy along with paid plans.

UPDF Pro Yearly: $25.99
UPDF Pro Perpetual: $43.99

For both plans, you need to pay an extra $60 per year to get the AI add-on.

#3. Foxit PDF editor

Foxit's PDF Editor has recently integrated with OpenAI's ChatGPT to include AI capabilities in its PDF editor.

Although the AI assistant is only available on the cloud version, the setup is convenient and fast.

Foxit’s AI editing features

Use AI assistant to translate specific text blocks or entire PDFs in 14+ languages, with a click.
It's easy to proofread content using AI. Select text to check it for spelling and grammar errors.
Leverage the AI writing assistant to enhance PDF content. Choose from various tones and adjust output length to generate texts as desired.
Use the ChatGPT-powered chatbot to work with PDFs in a conversational format. For instance, you can copy-paste PDF text into the chat and ask the bot to edit, rephrase, proofread, or explain.

Other editing features

Ribbon-style toolbar with PDF tools to re-order, reorganize, annotate, fill out forms, and e-sign documents.
The built-in search and replace feature makes finding or replacing words easy without reading through the entire PDF.

Pricing

Foxit PDF Reader has two Team plans to choose from:

PDF Editor Suite: $15.05 per month
PDF Editor Suite Pro: $18.55 per month

#4. PDFgear

PDFgear is an AI-powered PDF editor enabling you to edit and convert PDFs via natural language prompts.

Its AI-Copilot, integrated with ChatGPT 3.5, understands commands in simple language and makes edits without you moving any fingers.

PDFgear’s AI editing features

AI-powered summarize feature to quickly analyze, summarize, and extract essential sentences, key phrases, or significant sections from PDF files.
Type simple prompts such as ‘compress this PDF’ or ‘delete page 10’ and instruct Copilot on what to do. The chatbot will quickly understand and act on your requests.
Copilot has clever secondary confirmation to reconfirm your input before generating a response or performing tasks. Moreover, its AI understands the intent behind prompts and answers accordingly.
Rewriting text is now a no-brainer. Copy-paste text in Copilot to automatically rephrase or rewrite it using AI, while preserving its original format.
Copilot lets you perform batch editing. Use AI to edit, convert, compress, or summarize multiple PDFs at once.

Other editing features

PDFgear's offline PDF editor has a ribbon-style toolbar, making editing or adding text easy. You can also annotate PDFs by adding texts, sticky notes, highlights, and comments.
It comes with a repository of PDF editing tools to draw, crop, delete, and insert images.
The desktop version integrates with the OCR feature to transform paper documents into searchable and editable files.

Pricing

PDFgear has a free downloadable app for Mac and Windows but with basic editing capabilities. It has two paid plans to choose from:

Annual Plan: $19.99
Perpetual Plan: $49.99

#5. LightPDF

LightPDF is an easy-to-use offline and online PDF editor. The tool's integration with OpenAI's ChatGPT – 4.0 lets you chat with PDFs.

👀 Although the AI assistant is great at summarizing and answering questions in natural language, the integration is not meant to assist with PDF editing.

LightPDF’s AI editing features

LightPDF AI assistant can work on multiple PDFs at once. Use it to perform document analysis or research.
The AI chatbot provides precise answers with cited sources. You can click the references to review sources.
If you have complex topics or tables in your PDFs, use the chatbot to summarize or explain content.
You can change the chatbot's language, choose from different answer modes, and even set word limits.

Other editing features

With LightPDF, it's easy to edit text. Simply click on text blocks to edit or change formatting.
PDF annotation tools help you highlight, mark content, or add text anywhere on PDFs.
Collaborating and sharing PDF files is easy with LightPDF's cloud-based platform. Share file links with your team to work on the same document.

Pricing

LightPDF web app is free to use with limitations. To go full-throttle with AI capabilities, you can select any of its paid plans:

Weekly Pass: $13.99/month
Billed Monthly: $19.99/month
Billed Annually: $59.99
Buy 3 Get 3 Free: $149.99

#6. PDFelement

PDFelement by Wondershare is a cross-platform PDF editor with AI assistant for Windows, Mac, and mobile. The tool integrates with ChatGPT to unlock advanced PDF features.

This AI PDF editor works best for:

Students: To summarize lengthy notes
Teachers: To detect AI content and grammar errors
Professionals: To edit and proofread contracts
Researchers: To extract critical information without reading entire PDFs.

PDFelement’s AI editing features

Has an AI PDF summarizer to sum up lengthy PDFs and generate abstracts.
With PDFelement, it's easy to export or save text summaries as markdown files.
Built-in AI content detector that helps with text pattern analysis and identifies computer-generated content at scale.
Comes with an AI-powered proofreader and rewriter to check spelling or grammar errors.
Use Lumi AI, a ChatGPT-powered conversational bot, to chat with PDFs. Lumi can answer queries related to the document's content, while citing the document page numbers from which it got the answer.
No more bookmarking since the PDFelement AI editor automatically adds bookmarks to PDF documents based on structure and headings.

Other editing features

Click anywhere on the PDF to add or edit text, images, and shapes.
It gives you options to add a watermark, hyperlink text, change backgrounds, and more.
Powerful OCR feature to turn scanned PDF into an editable document.

Pricing

PDFelement has three plans to choose from:

Yearly Plan: $79.99
2-Year Plan: $109.99
Perpetual Plan: $129.99

#7. Forma

Forma is an AI-powered PDF editor for Mac, iPad, and iOS users that’s optimized for mobile devices.

Forma's AI-powered assistant makes it quick and easy for mobile users to edit PDFs and fill out forms.

Forma’s AI editing features

Built-in AI chatbot with generative AI capabilities to help you draft PDFs.
Prompt the chatbot to summarize, translate, or rewrite text. Customize chatbot settings to your preferred tone and style.
Forma provides a set of pre-built tasks to help you make the most of AI. Click on the PDF function you want to perform and let AI work magic.

Other editing features

Comes with an auto-fill feature that simplifies filling out monotonous forms. You also get options to add stamps, signatures, and images.
It’s easy to add or edit texts, drag and drop images, annotate, and watermark documents on the go.
Using your mobile, you can convert PDF files to other formats such as JPG, TXT, DOCX, and XLS.

Pricing

Forma is a free-to-use tool. However, it offers paid plans at $4.99/month.

#8. PDFfiller

PDFfiller is an OpenAI-powered PDF editing tool that lets you edit, summarize, and proofread PDFs. Teams at Kellogg's, Tesla, Meta, and FedEx teams trust the tool.

PDFfiller has a repository of over 10 million fillable documents you can choose from.

PDFfiller’s AI editing features

The PDF AI uses conversational models and natural language processing capabilities to facilitate interactions with PDFs. You can enter prompts so that AI can edit, organize, and manage PDFs on your behalf.
Use the AI summarizer to condense lengthy PDFs into concise summaries to save time and improve comprehension.
Refine and proofread business proposals with an AI proofreader. The tool automatically detects and corrects grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes.
Found an unknown word or complex term? Use AI to get explanations.
The AI PDF rewrite tool helps rephrase hard-to-read sentences, improving clarity and readability.

Other editing features

PDFfiller integrates with cloud storage apps like DropBox, Google Drive, and OneDrive, making uploading and saving files easy.
The toolbar has 11+ PDF tools for adding and editing texts, inserting shapes, highlighting or redacting text, e-signing, and filling out forms.
Built-in spell checker to highlight typos in fillable fields.

Pricing

PDFfiller doesn’t have a free version. However, all its paid plans come with a 30-day free trial.

It has three paid plans to choose from:

Basic: $20 per month
Plus: $30 per month
Premium: $40 per month

#9. HiPDF

HiPDF is a dynamic PDF solution offering a wide range of PDF tools to edit, convert, and compress PDFs.

Its recent integration with ChatGPT has enhanced the platform's PDF capabilities.

HiPDF’s AI editing feature

HiPDF's AI lets you talk to PDFs. Simply upload a PDF, wait for AI to analyze it, and then ask questions to the bot.
Users can customize prompts to get their desired output.
Use the pre-built AI prompts to summarize, rewrite, or explain PDFs.
HiPDF has an AI detector powered by GPTZero to detect AI-generated content.

Other editing features

Has options to add text, images, shapes, and signatures to documents.
Comes with built-in conversion tools to convert PDF into other text formats and vice versa.
The software also provides tools to edit images in PDFs.

Pricing

HiPDF web app is free to use with limitations. To get all of HiPDF’s features, you need to pay $5.99/month and access the pro version.

Want a discounted rate? Opt for HiPDF’s yearly plan and lower your monthly costs to $3.33 .

What are the benefits of using an AI-powered PDF editors, compared to traditional ones?

Using AI in PDF editors helps increase productivity, mainly by automating grunt work.

Here are some areas where AI-powered PDF editors outperform traditional ones 👇

Chat with PDFs: AI PDF editors are powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT 3.5 or 4. The technology lets you ask your PDFs questions and prompt ChatGPT to summarize, make notes, spot errors, etc.
Improve your writing: AI can understand context and propose alternatives for frequently used words or phrases. While traditional editors offer basic search and replace features, they can’t suggest changes.
Summarize documents: AI-powered PDF editors can summarize lengthy documents with a click. This can save time compared to manually reading and summarizing in traditional editors.
Easily translate your work: Some AI-powered PDF editors have integrated translation capabilities, which means that they can translate your PDF’s text in seconds. Traditional editors typically require manual translation or the integration of third-party translation tools.
Enhance existing text: AI can help improve the quality of the content. It can suggest better word choices, sentence structure improvements, and grammar corrections. Traditional editors have basic spell-check and grammar-check features, but you can’t rewrite anything to enhance quality.
Data Extraction and Analysis: AI-powered PDF editors can extract structured data from PDF forms or tables, making it easier to work with non-text data for analysis or reporting. Traditional editors require manual data entry or conversion.

Read and edit documents faster with Macro

We all face an inevitable truth: AI will transform how we work, and enhancing PDF editors is one avenue where there are already major benefits. This technology has the potential to automate mundane PDF tasks, perform intricate analysis, and enhance work.

If you're looking for a best-in-class way to leverage AI features in PDFs, download Macro's free app for Windows or Mac .

The free version offers AI-driven capabilities for reading, editing, and altering PDF files.