Comparison

Pages vs PDF Expert

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Pages

Create visually appealing documents with a wide range of templates and editing tools. Enhance your work with multimedia, track changes, and collaborate seamlessly. Offers advanced features for writing, design, and presentation.

Highlights
  • Apple-designed templates
  • Add images, video, audio
  • Track changes and comments
  • Screen View for mobile editing
  • Interactive EPUB creation
  • Drawing and annotation with Apple Pencil
  • Writing Tools for AI assistance
Features
Read full description

Pages is now part of Apple Creator Studio, an amazing collection of Apple’s most powerful creative apps designed to help you bring your ideas to life. The suite includes Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage — plus premium content and intelligence features in Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and Freeform, all in one simple plan. Creating, viewing, and editing documents in Pages, as well as collaborating with others in real time, does not require a subscription. Create beautiful documents with Pages on iPhone, iPad and Mac. Start with an Apple-designed template for a report, resume, poster, or digital book. Easily add images, movies, audio, tables, charts, and shapes. Use comments, change tracking, and highlights to review your work. On iPhone and iPad, Screen View optimizes content for your screen, making it easier to edit. Get Started Quickly • Work from iPhone, iPad, Mac, or even a PC with iCloud.com • Select from a wide variety of Apple-designed templates • Add from a library of shapes, tables, and charts with pre-defined styles • Import and edit Microsoft Word and text files Create Beautiful Documents • Format your document with gorgeous styles, fonts, and textures • Make your content more engaging with recorded audio, video, and image galleries • Create page templates to keep the design consistent across your page layout document • Use powerful graphics tools including image background removal and masking • Design interactive EPUB books that can be shared with others or published to Apple Books • Draw, write or annotate with Apple Pencil on iPad Advanced Tools • Use the table of contents view to easily navigate your document or book • Add comments and join threaded conversations • Turn on change tracking to mark up a document as you edit it • Create footnotes and endnotes and view character, word, and paragraph counts • Add elegant mathematical equations using LaTeX or MathML notation • Use presenter mode on iPhone and iPad to auto scroll text while giving a speech • Seamless integration with EndNote for inserting citations on Mac* Share with Anyone • Share your document publicly or collaborate with specific people using iCloud or Box • Make changes from any device and see a list of changes from others in real-time • Export your document in EPUB, Microsoft Word, RTF, TXT, and PDF format Apple Intelligence • Use Writing Tools to proofread, rewrite, summarize, and compose text • Create your own fun images with Image Playground based on a description Some features of Apple Creator Studio require an Apple Intelligence–capable device. For full system requirements and usage limits for Apple Creator Studio intelligence features, see Apple Support article 125029. * EndNote sold separately. EndNote integration requires a plug-in available from Apple Support.

About

PDF Expert

This app allows you to edit, annotate, fill out forms, and convert PDF documents. It offers AI-powered summarization and analysis, along with tools to merge, sign, and protect your files. Work seamlessly across Apple devices with a user-friendly interface.

Highlights
  • Edit PDF text and images
  • Annotate and highlight PDFs
  • Fill out PDF forms
  • Convert files to and from PDF
  • AI-powered summarization and analysis
  • Merge and combine PDF files
  • Sign documents with e-signatures
Features
Read full description

PDF Expert is a fast and easy PDF app to read, annotate, fill and sign PDF forms, convert files to PDF, and merge, split or compress documents – all in one intuitive app for iPhone, iPad, Mac & Vision Pro. Read PDF files with comfort, highlight and mark up text, fill out forms, sign contracts, create and convert PDFs, and summarize long documents in seconds with AI-powered tools. Unlock unlimited possibilities with PDF Expert Premium and work across all your Apple devices. "PDF Expert is one of my must-have iPad apps and a desktop-class PDF reader." – MacStories "The best app for managing, editing, and reading PDFs on your iPad." – The Sweet Setup ▶ WITH PDF EXPERT, YOU CAN: READ PDFs - PDF reader with Day, Night, and Sepia modes for comfortable reading anytime - Scroll PDFs vertically or horizontally and search text in any document - Open and view PDF files from email, web, Files, or any app via the Share menu - Read PDFs out loud with Text to Speech ANNOTATE AND MARK UP PDFs - Highlight, underline, and strike through text in your PDFs - Mark up documents with pen, shapes, text, notes, and comments - Add stamps such as Approved or Confidential - Record your voice and add audio notes to PDFs FILL AND SIGN PDF FORMS - Fill out PDF forms with text fields, checkboxes, and radio buttons - Sign PDF documents in seconds – draw your signature or add it from an image - Save your signature to sign contracts, agreements, invoices, and applications faster - Fill, sign, and send forms right from your iPhone – no printing or scanning needed - Supports all major form formats, including AcroForms and static XFA forms ***PREMIUM FEATURES*** EDIT PDFs - Edit text directly in a PDF – just as you would in a Word document - Add, replace, and resize images in your PDFs - Add links to other pages or websites - Add outlines to navigate large PDFs CREATE AND CONVERT PDFs - Create PDFs from Word files, images, and other documents - Convert Word to PDF, JPG to PDF, and PNG to PDF in seconds - Convert PDF to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, JPG, PNG, and TXT MERGE, SPLIT AND ORGANIZE PDFs - Merge and combine multiple PDF files into one - Split PDFs and extract pages into a new file - Add, delete, rotate, and reorder pages with thumbnail preview COMPRESS PDFs - Compress PDFs to reduce file size for email and sharing - Shrink large PDF files to save space on your device SUMMARIZE PDFs WITH AI – PDF COPILOT - List Main Points – get key takeaways from any PDF - Summarize – get concise summaries of entire PDFs or annotations - Ask Anything – find details with AI answers and references - Explain – get instant explanations of words or phrases PROTECT YOUR FILES - Password-protect PDF Expert - Redact – permanently black out sensitive information WORK WITH SCANNED DOCUMENTS - Open scanned PDFs to fill out, sign, annotate, and share CONSTRUCTION TOOLS - Scale and measure drawings with the Measure tab - Polygon, polyline, and redline tools MORE FEATURES - Customizable toolbar - Presentation Mode - Print and share PDFs via email or cloud ONE ACCOUNT FOR ALL YOUR APPLE DEVICES One Premium subscription covers PDF Expert on iPhone, iPad, and Mac – no need to buy versions separately. Read more about our terms and conditions here: https://pdfexpert.com/privacy https://pdfexpert.com/terms Don’t hesitate to reach out to us at http://readdle.com/contact

Screenshots

Pages4 screens
PDF Expert4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Pages at none against PDF Expert's 12. Pages also leads on review sentiment (59% vs 45%). PDF Expert's advantage is update cadence (fortnightly vs every 3 months) and chart position (#63 vs unranked). On price, rating, ratings volume and ads there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. PDF Expert sells 10 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per month. Pages asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.6 for Pages against 4.7 for PDF Expert. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 573K and 216K respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 59% of Pages's written reviews are positive against 45% of PDF Expert's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Pages ships an update every 3 months, PDF Expert fortnightly. Both last shipped on October 13, 2026.

Scorecard6 real differences · 5 level
Pages versus PDF Expert: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPagesPDF Expert
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.6 (573K ratings)4.7 (216K ratings) — better
Positive reviews59.2% of reviews — better45.5% of reviews
Number of ratings573K — better216K
Update frequencyEvery 3 monthsFortnightly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFree — betterFree with in-app purchases
Best chart rank—#63 — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS26.016.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size683 MB295 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperApple Inc.Readdle Technologies Limited

Customer experience

Pages

All ratings572,851 ratings
Positive91.4%
Neutral3.4%
Negative5.3%
Written reviews7,990 reviews
Positive59.2%
Neutral9.3%
Negative31.5%

PDF Expert

All ratings216,128 ratings
Positive92.4%
Neutral2.3%
Negative5.3%
Written reviews1,166 reviews
Positive45.5%
Neutral7.5%
Negative47.0%

User reviews

Pages

From 573K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 💻 Versatile writing app
  • 🎨 Excellent creative features
  • 🤝 Collaborative capabilities
  • 📚 Great for writing books/stories
  • 🏫 Useful for school/work documents

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Occasional glitches and crashes
  • 🔍 Difficult to find/organize documents
  • 🖋️ Frustrating cursor and text editing
  • 🔄 Inconsistent sync and file management
  • 🔢 Limited font and formatting options

PDF Expert

From 216K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Fast and responsive
  • 👍 Intuitive and user-friendly interface
  • 💡 Powerful annotation and editing tools
  • 🔒 Seamless cloud integration
  • 📚 Excellent for reading and organizing PDFs

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Frequent crashes and stability issues
  • 🔒 Subscription model for advanced features
  • 🔒 Inconsistent pricing and feature changes
  • 🔍 Cluttered and confusing UI in latest update
  • 🔍 Reduced customization options for annotations

Bugs and requests

Pages

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Documents disappearing or failing to save
  • Keyboard freezing and unresponsive typing
  • Formatting issues when importing/exporting files
  • Compatibility problems with older devices/OS versions

Requested features

5 requests
  • Add more font and formatting options
  • Improve cursor and text editing controls
  • Streamline document organization and search
  • Enhance sync and offline editing capabilities
  • Integrate grammar/spelling correction tools

PDF Expert

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Corrupted PDFs after editing
  • Sync issues with cloud storage providers
  • Unexpected loss of annotations and edits
  • Unreliable performance on older iPad models

Requested features

5 requests
  • Improved palm rejection for Apple Pencil
  • Customizable toolbar and annotation presets
  • Better integration with other productivity apps
  • More flexible file management and organization
  • Ability to create fillable PDF forms

In-app purchases

None

Pages

No in-app purchases

10 purchases

PDF Expert

Subscriptions9
  • PDF Expert Premium Trial7 Days trial$9.991 Month
  • PDF Expert Premium No Trial$9.991 Month
  • PDF Expert for Education7 Days trial$39.991 Year
Show 6 more
  • PDF Expert Premium7 Days trial3 variants$49.991 Year
  • PDF Expert Premium New7 Days trial$49.991 Year
  • PDF Expert Premium Existing7 Days trial$49.991 Year
  • PDF Expert – Premium Editing1 Year trial$49.991 Year
  • PDF Expert Mac & iOS Pro7 Days trial$79.991 Year
  • PDF Expert Mac & iOS7 Days trial$79.991 Year
One-time1
  • PDF Expert Basic$9.99

Questions

Is Pages free?
Pages is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is PDF Expert free?
PDF Expert is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Pages or PDF Expert?
PDF Expert is rated higher. Pages averages 4.6 out of 5 from 573K ratings, while PDF Expert averages 4.7 from 216K ratings.
Do Pages or PDF Expert have ads?
Neither Pages nor PDF Expert shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Pages or PDF Expert?
Pages ships an update every 3 months, and PDF Expert fortnightly. Most recently, Pages was updated on October 13, 2026 and PDF Expert on October 13, 2026.

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