An Adobe Acrobat alternative for Mac

If you mostly sign documents, fill in forms, make scans searchable and tidy up pages, you may not need Acrobat Pro at US$19.99 a month (annual plan, billed monthly, as of 2 November 2026). Stillpage does those jobs on your Mac for $29, paid once. If you need to edit a PDF's existing text, convert to Word, redact or comment, stay with Acrobat: Stillpage doesn't do those.

What it costs over time

Adobe also sells Acrobat Standard from US$14.99 a month and Acrobat Studio, with its AI Assistant, at US$24.99 a month on the same annual plan.

What Stillpage does

• Sign with a saved typed or drawn signature, plus the date and ticks in one click
• Fill in forms, saved so they keep working in other apps
• Make scans searchable with Apple's on-device text recognition, one file or a whole folder
• Merge PDFs, create a PDF from photos and scans, insert pages
• Rotate, delete and reorder pages
• Compress large PDFs for email

Everything runs on your Mac. Documents are never uploaded; the only network request the app makes is a licence check with Gumroad.

What Stillpage doesn't do

Keep Acrobat, or try PDF Expert, if you need to:

• Edit the existing text or images in a PDF
• Convert PDFs to Word, Excel or PowerPoint
• Highlight, comment or annotate
• Redact (permanently black out) text
• Split one PDF into several files
• Fill XFA forms, the kind that only open in Adobe Reader

Will my forms and signed PDFs still work in Acrobat?

Stillpage saves your answers, signatures and OCR text by adding them to the original file instead of rewriting it. Forms you fill keep their fields when someone opens them in Acrobat, and on our signed test files an independent validator still reported an existing digital signature as valid afterwards (Acrobat will show that the file changed after signing).

The free option: Preview

Every Mac has Preview, which can sign, fill simple forms, merge and reduce file size for free. It's enough for occasional use. People move to a dedicated app when they need batch OCR, forms that survive saving, or a faster signing routine. See signing a PDF on a Mac and filling in PDF forms.

Compare all the options

For Preview, PDFgear, PDF Expert, Acrobat and Stillpage side by side, see the best PDF editor for Mac in 2027.

Prices checked 2 November 2026 on adobe.com, pdfexpert.com and pdfgear.com; in US dollars, before tax. Acrobat is a trademark of Adobe; PDF Expert is a trademark of Readdle; PDFgear is a trademark of its owner. Stillpage is not affiliated with any of them.