PDF editors · #4 of 27 · ↑ PDFgear · ↓ PDF-XChange Editor
Preview
Preview ranks #4 of 27 in pdf editors in the week of 26 October 2026, with a visibility score of 23 across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity. It was named in 33% of the answers we sampled.
sampled: 2 of 4 assistants this week
Preview shows up in 33 of 83 answers across AI assistants, with an overall score of 22 out of 100. Claude rates it highest at 38, while ChatGPT and Perplexity both give it 13. It does best on Mac-specific questions, named in every answer (4 of 4) for "What's the best PDF editor for Mac?" and in 3 of 4 answers for both general PDF editor picks and privacy-focused recommendations. It's less visible elsewhere, never named for questions about open-source tools, OCR, table extraction, converting PDFs to Word or Excel, or as an alternative to itself.
Who's talking about you
| assistant | score | named in, this week | usual spot, this week |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 15 | 20% of answers | #5.8 |
| Claude | 37 | 45% of answers | #4.4 |
| Gemini | not sampled this week | ||
| Perplexity | not sampled this week |
Questions you win
| question | named in | best spot |
|---|---|---|
| What's the best PDF editor for Mac? | 3 of 3 | #1 |
| What's the best free PDF editor? | 4 of 4 | #3 |
| What are the best PDF editors in 2026? | 2 of 2 | #7 |
| Which PDF tool is best for privacy and sensitive documents? | 2 of 3 | #4 |
| What's the best alternative to Adobe Acrobat? | 2 of 3 | #5 |
| What's the best tool to fill in and sign a PDF form? | 1 of 2 | #1 |
| What's the best tool to edit a PDF without a subscription? | 1 of 2 | #1 |
| What's the best tool to merge, split and reorder PDF pages? | 1 of 2 | #3 |
| What are the best alternatives to Adobe Acrobat? | 1 of 2 | #7 |
| What are the best alternatives to Foxit? | 1 of 2 | #7 |
| Which PDF editor is best value for a small business? | 1 of 2 | #10 |
| What are the best alternatives to PDF-XChange Editor? | 1 of 2 | #13 |
| What are the best alternatives to PDFgear? | 1 of 2 | #17 |
| What are the best PDF editors? | 1 of 3 | #7 |
Questions you lose
| question | who got named instead |
|---|---|
| What's the best PDF editor for Windows? | Adobe Acrobat, PDF-XChange Editor, Foxit |
| What's the best online PDF editor that works in the browser? | Sejda, Smallpdf, iLovePDF |
| What's the best PDF editor app for iPhone or Android? | Adobe Acrobat, Xodo, PDF Expert |
| What's the best tool to convert a PDF to Word or Excel? | Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Word, ABBYY FineReader |
| What's the best tool to compress a large PDF? | PDFgear, Adobe Acrobat, PDF24 |
| What's the best OCR tool to make a scanned PDF searchable? | ABBYY FineReader, Adobe Acrobat, Stirling PDF |
| What's the best tool to redact or remove sensitive text from a PDF? | Adobe Acrobat, Foxit, PDF-XChange Editor |
| What's the best open-source or self-hosted PDF tool? | Stirling PDF |
| What's the best tool to extract tables or data from a PDF? | Adobe Acrobat, ABBYY FineReader |
| What's the best AI tool to summarise or chat with a PDF? | nobody in particular |
Assistants cited 21 pages for questions in this category that name your rivals and not you. See all sources for PDF editors.
In their words
- Claude“Preview — Built in, and genuinely good for annotation, signatures, and page rearranging.”
- Gemini“The Best Built-In Option (Mac Users): Apple Preview”
- ChatGPT“Apple Preview”
Closest rivals
- Preview vs PDF-XChange Editor19
- Preview vs PDFgear28
- Preview vs Smallpdf18
- Preview vs Foxit30
- Preview vs Stirling PDF16
All Preview alternatives · Full PDF editors leaderboard · Sources