PDF Architect vs PDF Candy

PDF Architect is a Windows PDF viewer and editor for creating, viewing, and editing PDF files. It can change text and images, manage pages, merge files, and insert or customize page elements. Conversion covers PDF, Word, Excel, HTML, text, and image formats. Review features include annotations and comparing two PDFs; form tools support creating and filling fillable forms. Secure adds passwords, permission levels, and digital signatures. E-Sign lets users prepare, send, and track documents in the application and creates a manifest for archiving the signature process; it requires a PDF Architect account. The Free plan costs nothing and includes viewing, creation from Word, Excel, and PPT, page rotation, deletion and rearrangement, and merging. Business deployment supports MSI packages and GPO, and the maker describes it as cloud-optional and local by default. Microsoft Office is required for plug-in use and Word conversion.

PDF Candy is a PDF toolkit for editing, converting, merging, splitting, compressing, signing, protecting and managing documents. Its tools include text editing, annotations and OCR, while AI features can summarize, chat with and translate PDF documents. Users can import files from Google Drive or Dropbox and save updated versions back to cloud storage. PDF Candy Desktop is a Windows download with 35 tools that can operate offline; the company lists 98 PDF tools and 19 languages. Access is listed for web, Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android. The free plan has page and hourly restrictions, limited file size, no batch processing and a desktop operations limit. Students and teachers can get one year of PDF Candy PRO online at no cost, with no hourly limits and uploads up to 500 MB. PDF Candy says files are deleted from its servers within two hours after processing. The free plan is available, with paid access from $6/mo.