PDF editors · #7 of 19 · ↑ Smallpdf · ↓ Stirling PDF
Preview
sampled: 3 of 4 assistants this week
Preview shows up in 21 of 68 answers across PDF editor questions, with an overall score of 17 out of 100. Claude rates it highest at 35, followed by Perplexity at 13 and ChatGPT at just 4. Its strongest showing is on "best PDF editor for Mac," where it's named in all 3 answers, and it also appears in 2 of 4 answers for redacting text, merging pages, filling forms, and compressing PDFs. It's never mentioned for summarizing PDFs with AI, OCR, open-source tools, Windows editors, or privacy-focused work.
Who's talking about you
| 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 |
Questions you win
| question | named in | best spot |
|---|---|---|
| What's the best PDF editor for Mac? | 3 of 3 | #1 |
| What's the best tool to edit a PDF without a subscription? | 2 of 3 | #3 |
| 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? | 2 of 4 | #1 |
| What's the best tool to merge, split and reorder PDF pages? | 2 of 4 | #1 |
| What's the best tool to compress a large PDF? | 2 of 4 | #2 |
| What's the best tool to redact or remove sensitive text from a PDF? | 2 of 4 | #3 |
| What are the best PDF editors in 2026? | 2 of 4 | #8 |
| What's the best free PDF editor? | 1 of 3 | #3 |
| What are the best PDF editors? | 1 of 3 | #8 |
| What's the best online PDF editor that works in the browser? | 1 of 4 | #5 |
| Which PDF editor is best value for a small business? | 1 of 4 | #11 |
Questions you lose
| question | who got named instead |
|---|---|
| What's the best PDF editor for Windows? | Adobe Acrobat, Foxit, PDF-XChange Editor |
| Which PDF tool is best for privacy and sensitive documents? | Stirling PDF, PDF-XChange Editor, PDFgear |
| What's the best PDF editor app for iPhone or Android? | PDF Expert, Adobe Acrobat, UPDF |
| What's the best tool to convert a PDF to Word or Excel? | Adobe Acrobat, ABBYY FineReader |
| What's the best OCR tool to make a scanned PDF searchable? | ABBYY FineReader, Adobe Acrobat |
| 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 |
| What's the best AI tool to summarise or chat with a PDF? | Adobe Acrobat |
Assistants cited 15 pages for questions in this category that name your rivals and not you. See all sources for PDF editors.
In their words
- Claude“macOS Preview — sign, annotate, reorder/delete pages, fill forms, combine files.”
- Gemini“Best Built-In Tool for Mac: Apple Preview”
- ChatGPT“Best free option: Apple Preview — excellent for basic markup, signing, and PDF management, but not true text editing.”
Closest rivals
- Preview vs Stirling PDF17
- Preview vs Sejda16
- Preview vs Smallpdf18
- Preview vs PDF Expert14
- Preview vs PDF-XChange Editor21
All Preview alternatives · Full PDF editors leaderboard · Sources