PDFluent is a free, source-available PDF editor for macOS and Windows. It edits, converts, redacts, and signs PDFs entirely on your device, with no account, no upload, and no subscription.
Download for macOS and Windows · Microsoft Store · Source-available license · PDFluent SDK
Most PDF editors either cost money every month or run your documents through someone else's server. PDFluent does neither. The app is built with Tauri v2 (Rust + React/TypeScript) on top of the PDFluent SDK, a pure-Rust PDF engine with no Pdfium, Poppler, MuPDF, or other C/C++ dependencies. Everything runs locally: opening, editing, and converting a PDF never leaves your machine unless you choose to send it somewhere.
Available on macOS and Windows. Complete for the non-XFA feature set: viewing, AcroForm filling (text, checkbox, radio, combo/list, comb), annotations, page management, merge/split, digital signatures, conversions, and OCR. XFA documents can be viewed and converted or flattened to a standard PDF. Dynamic XFA interactive fill is still experimental and not part of this release.
- Edit text directly in a PDF, not just annotate over it
- Convert to and from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
- Fill and flatten AcroForms (text, checkbox, radio, combo/list, comb)
- Annotations: highlight, underline, strikeout, comments, shapes, freehand
- Merge, split, reorder, rotate, compress, and watermark pages
- Digital signatures (PAdES / PKCS#12)
- OCR for scanned documents
- PDF/A conversion
- View and flatten XFA forms (interactive XFA fill is experimental)
| PDFluent | Adobe Acrobat | Browser-based tools | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Subscription | Often free, ad-supported |
| Runs offline | Yes | Mostly | No, files go through a server |
| Account required | No | Yes | Usually no |
| Source | Available on GitHub | Closed | Closed |
| Platforms | macOS, Windows | macOS, Windows, web | Any browser |
A longer, regularly updated comparison lives at pdfluent.com/vs-adobe-acrobat.
The editor's PDF engine, the PDFluent SDK, is a separate product with bindings for six languages. It is dual-licensed: AGPL-3.0, or a commercial licence if the copyleft does not work for you. If you're building your own PDF tooling rather than using the editor, the SDK is what you want:
| Language | Package | Install |
|---|---|---|
| Rust | pdfluent on crates.io |
cargo add pdfluent |
| Python | pdfluent on PyPI |
pip install pdfluent |
| Node.js | @pdfluent/node on npm |
npm i @pdfluent/node |
| Browser / WASM | @pdfluent/sdk-wasm on npm |
npm i @pdfluent/sdk-wasm |
| .NET | pdfluent on NuGet |
dotnet add package pdfluent |
| Java | com.pdfluent:pdfluent on Maven Central |
see Maven Central for the dependency snippet |
Full SDK documentation: pdfluent.com/docs. SDK licensing and pricing: pdfluent.com/sdk/pricing. SDK source: github.com/pdfluent/pdfluent-sdk.
The editor itself doesn't need any of this. It ships with the engine built in and never checks a license.
See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for how the frontend, Tauri backend, and SDK fit together, plus the Tauri command surface.
See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to set up a dev environment, code style, and how to submit changes. Note that this repository doesn't build standalone: the SDK it depends on is a separate, closed workspace.
Is PDFluent free? Yes, for the desktop editor, including commercial and business use. No license key, no trial period, no feature gates.
Is it open source? It's source-available, not open source in the OSI sense. The code here is public under the license in LICENSE.md, which lets you read, build, and modify the editor but doesn't grant a right to extract or redistribute the embedded PDF engine outside the app. The PDFluent SDK is a different product with its own licence: AGPL-3.0, or a commercial licence at your option.
Does anything leave my device? No, by default. PDFluent doesn't upload your documents anywhere. Optional diagnostics are opt-in.
What's built with? Tauri v2, Rust, React, and TypeScript on the frontend/shell side; the PDFluent SDK for everything PDF-related.
How does this compare to Adobe Acrobat? See the table above, or the longer writeup at pdfluent.com/vs-adobe-acrobat.
- PDF viewing (open, render, navigate pages)
- Zoom controls (Cmd +/-, reset)
- Page thumbnails in sidebar
- Keyboard navigation (arrows, PageUp/Down, Home/End)
- Manipulation (merge, split, rotate, delete/reorder pages, compress, watermark)
- Annotations (highlight, underline, strikeout, comment, shapes, freehand)
- Form filling (AcroForms: text, checkbox, radio, combo/list, comb, multi-select, link trust)
- Digital signatures (PAdES / PKCS#12)
- Conversions (DOCX/XLSX/PPTX, PDF/A) and OCR
- XFA: view + convert/flatten to standard PDF (interactive XFA fill is experimental, not shipped)
- Storage integration (BYOS, managed storage)
PDFluent is source-available, proprietary software, free to use including for commercial and business use. It isn't open source: extracting or embedding its components outside the application requires a separate license.
Full End-User License Agreement in LICENSE.md (summary in LICENSE), also at pdfluent.com/license. SDK licensing at pdfluent.com/sdk/pricing.
Third-party open-source components bundled with PDFluent remain under their own licenses; see THIRD_PARTY.md and THIRD_PARTY_ATTRIBUTIONS.md (also in-app under Help → Open Source Notices).
- pdfluent.com: homepage
- pdfluent.com/download: get the app
- pdfluent.com/docs: SDK documentation
- pdfluent.com/support: support
- github.com/pdfluent/examples: SDK code examples