Compare the Top PDF Annotators for Mac as of September 2026

What are PDF Annotators for Mac?

PDF annotation tools are pieces of software designed to allow users to add notes and highlight text on PDF documents. They can be used by students or professionals to mark up documents, make comments, and organize information in an intuitive way. Annotations may also include drawing shapes or adding images. The annotations can then be saved with the document for easy sharing and future reference. Compare and read user reviews of the best PDF Annotators for Mac currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

  • 1
    PDF Studio
    PDF Studio is a powerful and affordable PDF editor that effortlessly caters to both simple and complex PDF tasks. From adding text, various annotations, watermarks, and digital signatures to filling out forms and converting MS Office to PDF, it covers all your needs. The PDF editor is perfect for companies and organizations looking to seamlessly automate their PDF editing and eliminate repetitive daily tasks with batch processing of multiple documents. Empower your team with perpetual PDF software at a fraction of the cost compared to competing subscription-based solutions like Adobe® Acrobat®. NEW: Qoppa PDF Studio 2023 released! The latest version, PDF Studio 2023, offers impressive enhancements, including support for Dropbox Team Spaces, improved enterprise deployments, expanded multi-document functions, a new highlighter marker tool, and optimization options for smaller document sizes. Available on Linux, Windows, macOS, and other major platforms.
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    Starting Price: $99.00
  • 2
    Adobe PDF Library SDK

    Adobe PDF Library SDK

    Datalogics Inc.

    Adobe PDF Library is the only commercial PDF SDK built on Adobe Acrobat's own core engine, delivering the same rendering accuracy, PDF spec coverage, and behavior as Acrobat itself. Available in Modern C++, Adobe C/C++, .NET, .NET Framework, and Java, and supported on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Create, edit, merge, split, annotate, and watermark PDFs programmatically; convert to and from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF/A, PDF/X, and more; add OCR, digital signatures, redaction, and encryption; and process AcroForms and XFA forms. SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, with a 91% customer retention rate among enterprise users. For enterprise deployment, the pdfRest API Toolkit Container packages this technology as a self hosted REST API for on premises, private cloud, or hybrid environments. Datalogics also offers Scout, an AI assistant, and an MCP server so teams can bring PDF capabilities into AI powered workflows.
    Starting Price: $5,999
  • 3
    UPDF

    UPDF

    Superace Software Technology Co., Ltd.

    UPDF supports editing, annotating, and managing PDF seamlessly on for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. You can get every tool you need to edit, annotate, and organize your PDF files in one premiere all-rounder smart application. It is explicitly designed to meet the desire of most users for a stunning yet very comprehensible interface that is not just only for beginners. Key Features: 1. Edit PDF Document - You can add or delete texts as well as edit the text's properties and formats such as its font style, font color, and size. - You can also crop, rotate, replace, extract or delete images. 2. Annotate PDF - Easily highlight, underline, and strike out those parts. You can also add shapes, sticky notes and text boxes for a quicker and easier means of adding texts. 3. PDF Page Management - Rotate, delete, extract and rearrange PDF pages as you need. 4. View and Navigate PDF Files - Flexible reading mode such as single page mode or double-page mode.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 4
    Able2Extract Professional
    Convert, create, edit, OCR, compare, and sign PDFs. Customize the interface language and its appearance from light to dark themes for working with PDFs comfortably. Tailor your conversions by selecting a page, a paragraph, or even a single line for conversion. Custom PDF to Excel conversion to convert complex PDF table data to Microsoft Excel with pinpoint precision and a Smart Layout Detector for keeping table styles intact. Edit PDF text and pages. Annotate and redact PDF content. Sign PDF documents. Fill, edit and create PDF forms. Split documents into even parts. Convert scanned PDFs in English, French, Spanish, and German. Automate the batch PDF conversion process by queuing up a large volume of PDF files and even whole directories. Batch create PDF from a wide range of formats and merge all PDFs into one file. Create secure PDFs from blank pages or existing documents by adding passwords and file permissions. Able2Extract Professional: Your Swiss Army Knife for PDF files.
    Starting Price: $149.95/one-time/user
  • 5
    PDFgear

    PDFgear

    PDFgear

    PDFgear is an all-in-one PDF solution that helps users view, edit, protect, convert, sign, annotate, organize, OCR, Copilot, organize PDF files, and make more possibilities on Windows, MacOS, iOS, and iPadOS. PDFgear offers all expected functions in its clean and straightforward interface so users could enjoy their document reading and editing experience without disturbance. PDFgear Copilot provides more possibilities as a personal document assistant. As it's powered by AI, users could easily manipulate all PDFgear functions and chat with PDFs by asking PDFgear Copilot. Get lost in various functions and comprehensive document content? Don't worry! Just ask Copilot! It will cover everything. With PDFgear and Copilot in it, processing PDF is like a walk in the garden.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 6
    KDAN PDF

    KDAN PDF

    Kdan Mobile Software

    KDAN PDF is a high-performance document intelligence solution designed for professionals who require robust editing and analysis tools across Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. It functions as a comprehensive PDF engine that streamlines the document lifecycle through advanced AI integration. Users can leverage the built-in AI assistant to summarize long reports and extract structured data from complex files instantly. The software excels in high-accuracy OCR, supporting over 50 languages to transform scanned images into searchable text. Key metrics of KDAN PDF include its optimized app launch speeds and powerful offline processing capabilities, allowing for secure text editing, file conversion, and page management without an internet connection. With features like Bates numbering, secure redaction, and multi-format conversion (Office, HTML, ePub), KDAN PDF provides a flexible and efficient environment for managing professional digital archives on any device.
    Starting Price: $59.99/year (billed annually)
  • 7
    LightPDF

    LightPDF

    Wangxu Technology Co.,Ltd.

    LightPDF is an all-in-one, AI-powered PDF productivity platform designed to help users create, understand, and manage documents more efficiently across devices. It integrates advanced AI tools such as an AI PDF Generator, AI presentation creation, PDF-to-mind-map conversion, document translation, and an AI Agent—with a complete set of PDF capabilities including watermark removal, file conversion, encryption, compression, and other essential document-processing features—enabling users to handle complex PDF tasks more efficiently in one place. With both intelligent automation and reliable PDF tools, LightPDF helps users work smarter and faster whether they are studying, working, or collaborating.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 8
    PDFKit.NET 5.0

    PDFKit.NET 5.0

    TallComponents

    Create and manipulate PDF documents. Split, append, stamp, encrypt, extract, fill, and more. PDFKit.NET is a 100% managed (verifiable) .NET class library for creating and manipulating PDF documents. It consists of just a single assembly that can be xcopy-deployed. It has no dependencies other than the .NET framework. Central to PDFKit.NET is a consistent and highly intuitive object model consisting of classes like document, page collection, page, canvas, shape, bookmark, annotation, field, etc. The focus of the development team is always to ease the task of integrating our class library into a larger application. Fill text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, etc., and save the form either editable or flattened with the PDFKit.NET 5.0. With PDFKit.NET 5.0 you can populate and consume dynamic XFA documents with the new XFA processor API. Extract all graphics on a page as a collection of shapes with PDFKit 5.0. Shapes can be text, images, and curves.
    Starting Price: $990 per year
  • 9
    Readiris

    Readiris

    I.R.I.S. Group

    Discover Readiris 17, PDF and OCR publishing software (optical character recognition) for windows. Have you dreamt of an intelligent, unique and intuitive solution to manage your PDF’s and paper documents? You've found it. Readiris 17 for Windows allows you to aggregate and split, edit and annotate, protect and sign your PDF’s. It’s also a global solution to convert, edit and transform all your paper documents into a variety of digital formats, intuitively with a few clicks.
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