PDFgear vs Preview
as AI assistants see them, week of 2026-09-21
PDFgear edges ahead overall, scoring 27 versus Preview's 17, and shows up more often too, in 26 of 68 answers compared with Preview's 21. PDFgear leads on named_in more often, coming out ahead on 9 questions to Preview's 5, with 6 ties. PDFgear is the clear pick for "best PDF editors in 2026" (4 of 4) and "best free PDF editor" (3 of 3), while Preview owns its Mac turf, named in every answer (3 of 3) for "best PDF editor for Mac." Scores swing by assistant: Claude rates Preview highest at 35, while ChatGPT and Perplexity both favor PDFgear at 33.
Head to head
| metric | PDFgear | Preview |
|---|---|---|
| score | 27 | 17 |
| questions won | 13 | 12 |
By assistant
PDFgear
| assistant | score | named in, this week | usual spot, this week |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 33 | 40% of answers | #2.5 |
| Claude | 16 | 30% of answers | #6.5 |
| Gemini | not sampled this week | ||
| Perplexity | 33 | 45% of answers | #3.6 |
Preview
| assistant | score | named in, this week | usual spot, this week |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 4 | 5% of answers | #3.0 |
| Claude | 35 | 55% of answers | #4.8 |
| Gemini | not sampled this week | ||
| Perplexity | 13 | 20% of answers | #5.0 |
Where they differ
Only PDFgear gets named for
- What's the best PDF editor for Windows?
- Which PDF tool is best for privacy and sensitive documents?
- What's the best tool to convert a PDF to Word or Excel?
- What's the best PDF editor app for iPhone or Android?
Only Preview gets named for
- What's the best tool to merge, split and reorder PDF pages?
- What's the best tool to redact or remove sensitive text from a PDF?
- What's the best online PDF editor that works in the browser?
More comparisons
- Foxit vs PDFgear
- Nitro PDF vs PDFgear
- PDF-XChange Editor vs PDFgear
- PDFgear vs Smallpdf
- Preview vs Stirling PDF
- Preview vs Sejda
Not sold on either?
Scores count how often each assistant names a product, weighted by position. How the score works · Full PDF editors leaderboard