PDF Candy vs PDF Studio

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.

PDF Studio is a PDF editor that maintains compatibility with the PDF Standard. It creates PDFs from scans, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, text, and image files, and supports direct editing of PDF text, images, and shapes as well as redaction. OCR can recognize text and make searchable PDFs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Pro adds batch processing for multiple documents and an Action Wizard for automating tasks. Integrations include DocuSign, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive; cloud documents are edited as temporary local copies and returned to the service when saved. Security features include password protection, encryption, permissions, digital signatures, digital IDs, and trusted certificates. Pro also supports PDF/A, PDF/X, and PDF/UA validation or conversion, plus accessible tagged PDF creation. The free PDF Studio Viewer can read and annotate PDFs and fill interactive forms. PDF Studio Pro costs $149, paid once for one user on two computers, with a perpetual license. The Unix installer does not include native OCR or scanning features.