iLovePDF vs PDFsam Basic

as AI assistants see them, week of 2026-09-21

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iLovePDF edges out PDFsam Basic overall, scoring 9 out of 100 versus 6, and shows up in 13 of 68 answers compared to PDFsam Basic's 7. iLovePDF's standout moment is compression, named in 4 of 4 answers, while PDFsam Basic's strength is merging, splitting and reordering pages, also named in 4 of 4 answers. Head-to-head, iLovePDF was named more often in 6 questions, PDFsam Basic in 2, with 12 ties. Neither tool gets a mention for redaction, AI summarising, OCR, or form-filling questions, and PDFsam Basic also misses out on browser-based editing entirely.

Head to head

metric	iLovePDF	PDFsam Basic
score	9	6
questions won	9	4

By assistant

iLovePDF

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	4	5% of answers	#2.0
Claude	16	35% of answers	#8.6
Gemini	not sampled this week
Perplexity	8	15% of answers	#6.7

PDFsam Basic

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	5	5% of answers	#1.0
Claude	11	20% of answers	#6.8
Gemini	not sampled this week
Perplexity	5	5% of answers	#1.0

Where they differ

Only iLovePDF gets named for

What's the best tool to compress a large PDF?
What's the best tool to convert a PDF to Word or Excel?
What's the best alternative to Adobe Acrobat?
What's the best online PDF editor that works in the browser?
What's the best PDF editor app for iPhone or Android?
What are the best PDF editors in 2026?

Only PDFsam Basic gets named for

Which PDF tool is best for privacy and sensitive documents?

More comparisons

Not sold on either?

Scores count how often each assistant names a product, weighted by position. How the score works · Full PDF editors leaderboard