PDF Expert vs Stirling PDF

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

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PDF Expert and Stirling PDF both sit on the lower end of AI visibility, scoring 14 and 17 out of 100 overall. PDF Expert shows up in 15 of 68 answers, with a clean sweep on "best PDF editor app for iPhone or Android" (4 of 4) and strong mentions for Mac editors (3 of 3), but it's never named for open-source or self-hosted tools. Stirling PDF appears in 17 of 68 answers and sweeps the open-source and self-hosted question (3 of 3), while sitting out redaction and sign-and-fill questions entirely. Head to head, Stirling PDF edges ahead, named more often in 7 questions versus 5 for PDF Expert, with 8 ties.

Head to head

metric	PDF Expert	Stirling PDF
score	14	17
questions won	7	12

By assistant

PDF Expert

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	13	15% of answers	#2.3
Claude	18	30% of answers	#5.7
Gemini	not sampled this week
Perplexity	13	20% of answers	#4.8

Stirling PDF

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	9	10% of answers	#2.0
Claude	36	60% of answers	#5.4
Gemini	not sampled this week
Perplexity	9	10% of answers	#1.5

Where they differ

Only PDF Expert gets named for

What's the best PDF editor app for iPhone or Android?
What's the best tool to redact or remove sensitive text from a PDF?

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 online PDF editor that works in the browser?
What's the best free PDF editor?
What's the best tool to edit a PDF without a subscription?
What's the best PDF editor for Windows?
What's the best OCR tool to make a scanned PDF searchable?

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