Nitro PDF vs Stirling PDF

as AI assistants see them, week of 2026-09-28

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Nitro PDF leads here, with an overall score of 22 versus Stirling PDF's 16, and a wider footprint too: named in 30 of 79 answers compared to Stirling's 19. Nitro sweeps the Adobe Acrobat alternative and Mac editor questions, showing up in 4 of 4 answers for each, and gets 3 of 3 on Windows and Foxit alternative questions. Stirling PDF, meanwhile, owns the open-source and self-hosted PDF tool question, named in all 3 answers, and shows up in 2 of 3 answers on privacy-focused questions. Head-to-head, Nitro PDF comes out ahead in 11 questions, Stirling PDF in 6, with 8 ties.

Head to head

metric	Nitro PDF	Stirling PDF
score	22	16
questions won	12	16

By assistant

Nitro PDF

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	20	25% of answers	#3.4
Claude	28	40% of answers	#4.3
Gemini	not sampled this week
Perplexity	19	21% of answers	#3.8

Stirling PDF

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	7	5% of answers	#1.0
Claude	33	55% of answers	#7.1
Gemini	not sampled this week
Perplexity	10	11% of answers	#1.0

Where they differ

Only Nitro PDF gets named for

What's the best PDF editor for Mac?
What's the best tool to convert a PDF to Word or Excel?

Only Stirling PDF gets named for

What's the best open-source or self-hosted PDF tool?
Which PDF tool is best for privacy and sensitive documents?
What's the best tool to merge, split and reorder PDF pages?
What's the best online PDF editor that works in the browser?
What are the best alternatives to Nitro PDF?
What's the best free PDF editor?

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