In this PDF Expert vs PDFelement comparison, I will show you the key differences between these two PDF editors. I will compare PDF Expert to PDFelement based on features, pricing, my experience, user interfaces, and pros and cons. I spent numerous hours with both PDF editors, and I am here to share the benefits and limitations of each tool to ensure you make the right choice.
These are the key points that I explored during the PDF Expert vs PDFelement clash:
- PDF Expert is a faster PDF editor than PDFelement.
- PDF Expert is a more suitable PDF editor for Mac overall.
- PDFelement is a cheaper PDF editor than PDF Expert.
- While PDF Expert only supports Mac and iOS, PDFelement works on all systems, including Windows.
- Both PDF editors have easy-to-use PDF editing tools.
Now, let’s dive into the side-by-side comparison of PDF Expert vs PDFelement!
Key differences between PDF Expert and PDFelement
Here is a short overview of the key differences I found in my detailed comparison of PDF Expert and PDFelement:
Comparison: PDF Expert vs PDFelement
First, I will show you both PDF readers’ features one by one. Second, I will guide you through my experience with them and their pricing. Lastly, I will show you the pros and cons of PDFelement and PDF Expert and reveal my pick.
Key features
Let’s compare PDF Expert and PDFelement based on their key features!
PDF Expert’s features
Let’s move on with PDF Expert’s features!
PDF Editor

PDF Expert is a simple tool when it comes to PDF editing. To access the PDF editing features, open your PDF file and go to the edit tab on the top toolbar.
With PDF Expert, you can change text directly in a PDF file. It has a built-in OCR, so it recognizes the font type and seamlessly inserts the new text in the same format.
Also, you can easily add, replace, and resize images in your PDFs. I loved that you can easily insert links in the PDF document that point to external websites or to other pages in the document.
On the top toolbar, you can see the export functions. Using this tool, PDF Expert can convert PDF files into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, JPG, PNG, and more. Converting PDFs is super easy, and the exporting process is fast.
Read PDF Documents

During the PDFelement vs PDF Expert review, one of my surprises was how fast and easy it was to read PDF documents with PDF Expert.
When opening a PDF file, you can switch between more view options. You can use a one-page or two-page layout. Also, you have the option to view two pages vertically next to each other or horizontally after each other.
PDF Expert offers three themes when viewing your PDF documents. It allows you to choose day, night, or sepia mode to reach maximum eye comfort. You can choose from these themes by clicking on the View Tab.
It is also great that you can use bookmarks when working on your PDFs. It is particularly valuable while reading books.
Overall, PDF Expert is an outstanding PDF reader tool packed with great features to make reading smoother.
Annotate PDF files

PDF Expert offers some annotation features as well. If you click on the first tab on the top toolbar, you can access the annotation tools. You can highlight text, comment, draw, and add stickers and shapes.
It is super cool that you can leave audio comments in the PDFs. This feature can come in handy when reviewing PDF files, as it makes the process faster.
You can overview your changes on the left side when annotating your PDF files. Using this function, you can simply click on a specific edit, which will take you to that part directly.
Fill out and sign PDF forms
Similarly to many PDF editors, PDF Expert has PDF form-filling and signing tools in its kit.
With PDF Expert, you can easily fill out PDF forms. You can add text boxes, numbers fields, checkboxes, and places for the signatures.
To use the signing feature, just type your name, and PDF Expert will transform it into a handwriting format. This way, you can sign PDFs electronically within a few seconds.
Organize PDFs
Using PDF Expert, it is super easy to rotate, add, reorder, and remove pages from your PDFs. With a few clicks, you can combine multiple PDFs into one or split a PDF into multiple documents.
To help others overview your PDF structure more easily, you can add headers, footers, and Bates numbering to your pages.
PDFelement’s Features
Let’s dive into PDFelement’s key features!
PDF Editing

On the home page, you can quickly access some tools to edit your PDF, add text, crop or translate your page, or use the optical character recognition (OCR) tool. To use all the PDF editing features, click on edit in the top toolbar, and you will find all the tools you need here.
Using this function, you can add, delete, move, and resize all the elements of the page. PDFelement supports drag-and-drop, so you can move text boxes, pictures, and forms all around your pages.
Whenever you want to make a change or add new text, you can further customize the parameters on the right sidebar. You can change the fonts, sizes, colors, spacing, and more.

With PDFelement Pro, you can add and edit pictures as well. Just go to the image tab on the top toolbar, and you can add or drag and drop a picture.
Once it is on your page, you can move, resize, and perform different actions, such as rotating.
Ultimately, I discovered during my Wondershare PDFelement review that you can edit PDFs easily, and the tools are quite intuitive.
PDF reader

PDFelement also has great PDF reading features, which are included in the free trial version. It provides different views like a single-page, 2-page, 4-page spread, and split views.
You can choose from dark and light modes, which makes it easier to read PDF documents and protect your eyes. It is especially useful if you work on PDF files a lot.
Annotate PDFs

If you hit on the comment, you can access all the relevant annotation tools to easily review documents. You can leave comments, highlight text, or add stamps where others can sign the documents.
It’s also great that PDFelement offers numerous options to customize these annotations further. For example, you can choose from multiple colors when adding a note. Although this is not a monumental feature, I like that they also pay close attention to these small things.
Forms and signing tools
With PDFelement, you can fill out and create PDF forms. When I tested the PDF forms, I found one really practical thing. This is the “Calculate Order” function.
With this tool, you can give the sum of the other two fields, so essentially works like a very simple Excel. I also noticed that the PDF forms’ tools are straightforward and intuitive.
As mentioned, you can sign PDFs using PDFelement. You can create your digital signature with a few clicks and smoothly sign documents.
Organize PDFs

Furthermore, it is super easy to reorganize your PDF pages. Click on the Organize tab at the top, and you can delete, insert, and change the order of the pages.
There are also other options like rotating, sizing, and cropping your PDF so you can make the pages look exactly like they fit you.
PDF Protection

Security is crucial when deciding between PDF editors. And during my Wondershare PDFelement review, it passed the test.
Using PDFelement, you can give an open password and a permission password to your PDF files.
If choosing the open passwords, you have to choose a password that must be entered each time you enter a PDF file. On the other hand, you can set a permission password to allow others to edit and print the PDFs.
Converting PDFs into other formats
PDFelement can convert PDFs into many different formats. Just click the “Convert, select a format you want to convert your PDF file, and that is is.
It supports many file formats, including Microsoft Word, Excel, image, and Epub.
AI tools

Lastly, I tested the AI tools during my Wondershare PDFelement review. Using the AI assistant feature, can ask questions about a PDF file, request a summary, and more.
Essentially, it helps you manage your PDFs with high efficiency and create content for your PDFs. I did not have to wait too long for the output, which is also a good point. Moreover, I experienced high accuracy when the AI assistant provided me with the answers.
Compared to other PDF editors on the market, PDFelement has solid PDF tools.
My experience
Now, let’s see my experience with both PDF apps!
My experience with PDF Expert
PDF Expert is a pretty fast, lightweight PDF editor, especially if we compare it to Adobe Acrobat Reader. It is a solid PDF viewer that allows you to change between different themes. So, it offers a pleasant experience when reading PDF files.
Moreover, PDF Expert is a simple PDF editor. It has the most crucial features to edit PDFs fast. While it does not have that many PDF editing features like Adobe Acrobat or UPDF, it is easy to use its tools.
Finally, I loved PDF Expert’s user-friendly interface. It is easy to navigate on its pages, access the tools, and convert PDF files into different formats.
Overall, I had a positive experience with PDF Expert and did not encounter many issues.
My experience with PDFelement

PDFelement is an easy-to-use PDF editor overall. Many times, I worked with longer PDF files in parallel, but I did not experience any performance issues, which is quite common with many PDF editors.
It is also great that they launch new features regularly, so they keep up with the latest changes in the PDF and software space.
PDFelement has a user-friendly interface where you can easily find and use all the tools you need. Besides navigating smoothly among its PDF tools, I also appreciated the PDF reading functionality.
It is great that you can choose from different themes and use many view options depending on what PDF document you read.
Overall, I had a very positive experience with PDFelement; it offered great value when managing my PDF files.
Pricing
In the next round of the PDF Expert vs PDFelement battle, let’s check their pricing!
PDF Expert’s pricing

PDF Expert offers two paid plans.
You can get a lifetime subscription for a one-time fee of €149.99. While it includes almost all the features except the PDF Copilot, you have to pay for the updates, and you will not have access to the iPhone and iPad versions.
The annual subscription is €63.74 for the first year and €84.99 for the remaining years. It includes the updates, iPhone and iPad versions, and the PDF Copilot.
All in all, PDF Expert is way cheaper than Adobe Acrobat and an affordable PDF solution on the market.
PDFelement’s pricing
PDFelement pricing for individuals looks like this:

You can get the yearly plan for $79.99 per user for a single platform. A cross-platform individual plan is $89.99 per user yearly, and you can use PDFelement on various platforms.
The yearly plan, regardless of whether you buy it for a single or cross-platform, includes no watermark, 1-year access to all features, 1-year of PDFelement updates, and Free 20GB PDFelement Cloud storage. These plans also cover free customer support.
In addition to the yearly plan, you can purchase a 2-year plan for $109.99 for a single platform and for $119.99 for cross-platform. With the 2-year plan, you can get the latest version of PDFelement for 2 years, 2-year access to all features, and 100GB PDFelement Cloud storage.
You can also buy the perpetual license, which costs a one-time fee of $129.99. With the perpetual license, you get access to all features, as well as 20GB of PDFelement Cloud storage. However, if there are updates in the future for the next versions, you need to pay to get all the new features.
For businesses, PDFelement offers the following plans:

The annual plan for one user is $109.9, while the lifetime license is $139. If you want to purchase PDFelement for more than 10 users, I recommend reaching out to them, as they may give you volume discounts.
Based on a common practice in the PDF editor space, if you want to use the AI tools without limits, you need to buy it for $3.99 / month. There are also discounts for students.
Overall, PDFelement is among the cheaper PDF editors. Just to give you an example, Adobe Acrobat’s yearly plan is $239, while Nitro offers its Pro plan for €199.78. As you can see, they are significantly more expensive than PDFelement, which makes it one of the best alternatives on the market.
PDF Expert’s pros and cons

Let’s look at the pros and cons I discovered after reviewing PDF Expert and PDFelement.
PDF Expert’s pros
PDF Expert has advanced features when it comes to PDF reading. It provides more view options, themes, and bookmarks, so you can display PDFs in a way that fits you.
Moreover, PDF Expert is a fast app in general. I did not experience any freezing during PDF editing or reading.
Also, PDF Expert has a user-friendly interface, and you can easily navigate its pages and find all the tools you need.
Finally, PDF Expert has a reasonable price compared to many other PDF apps.
PDF Expert’s cons
Its most straightforward limitation is that you can only use it on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. So, if you are a Windows user, PDF Expert is a no-go for you.
PDFelement’s pros and cons

After my PDFelement review, I found these pros and cons you should know about this PDF editor.
PDFelement’s pros
PDFelement is a super easy PDF editor. Using it, you can edit and create PDFs quickly and smoothly.
Also, PDFelement is cheap. The $79.99 is a reasonable price for the value it offers, and it provides multi-platform support as well.
In addition, the PDF reading tools are outstanding. You can choose from different view options and two themes.
PDF document editing is very simple, and you can choose from numerous formatting options.
PDFelement’s cons
I did not find any issues with the PDF editor or its functionality. Nevertheless, I identified one issue during my Wondershare PDFelement review based on user reports.
Some users reported that after they buy a lifetime license, there are pop-ups after some months to upgrade their plan. While I did not experience this problem, it may be worth noting.
There were also reports regarding the fact that AI tools are not included in the paid plans, and you need to pay if you upgrade your lifetime license. Nevertheless, these are the same with almost all the
Related articles:
- PDF Expert Vs UPDF: Side-by-Side Comparison (2025)
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My recommendation: PDFelement vs PDF Expert
After my PDFelement vs PDF Expert research, I discovered that both PDF editors are top choices. If I need to pick one, that would be a tough decision.
For Mac users, I think PDF Expert is a better PDF solution, as it is faster than PDFelement and has a user-friendly interface with easy-to-use tools.
For Windows users, I recommend PDFelement. This is not just because PDF Expert works only on Mac but also because it is a cheaper PDF editor with solid AI features.
Overall, PDFelement is a budget-friendly option with high versatility, while PDF Expert is a lightweight and easy-to-use Mac-only PDF editor. Both PDF editors are among the top choices on the market.
Frequently asked questions
What is better than PDF Expert?
PDF Expert is one of the best PDF editors, but it is not for everyone. If you want to try other tools, I recommend looking at UPDF, Foxit, PDFgear, PDFelement, Nitro, and EaseUS PDF.
What is better than PDFelement?
I think PDFelement is one of the best five PDF editors. If I need to recommend an alternative to PDFelement, you should take a look at UPDF, Foxit, or Nitro.
Can a PDF Expert compare PDFs?
If you click on the Comment tab, you will find the option to compare multiple files.
Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself, and all opinions expressed here are our own. This post may contain affiliate links that, at no additional cost to you, may earn a small commission. Read the full privacy policy here.

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