PDF Max vs PDF Vault
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
PDF Max
This app allows you to read, annotate, and sign PDF documents on your mobile device. You can mark up text, add handwritten notes, insert stamps, fill out forms, and manage PDF pages. It also offers robust file management and cloud integration for seamless access to your documents.
- Read and annotate PDFs
- Fill and sign PDF forms
- Handwriting and text markup
- Manage PDF pages
- Cloud storage integration
- Voice annotations
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PDF Max is a complete PDF editor for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, trusted by millions of people since 2012. From signing a form to building research you can verify, PDF Max helps you edit, annotate, organize, understand, study, protect, and deliver PDFs—all in one app. YOUR PDF. NOW A WORKSPACE. Collect important passages, highlights, images, tables, formulas, and notes as Cards beside your PDFs. Every Card remembers where it came from, so you can return to the original page whenever you need the full context. • Search, tag, connect, and arrange your Cards • Gather related Cards into named groups called Frames • Organize evidence from several PDFs without merging them • Compare passages side by side or view your evidence as an Outline or table • Present Frames or export your work to Markdown, PDF, or Word STUDY WHAT MATTERS Turn trusted Cards into Questions, practice a focused topic, or use scheduled Study for long-term review. Track your Progress, study text and visual material, and return to the supporting PDF whenever an answer needs more context. On supported devices, Apple Intelligence can draft Questions for you to review before saving. EDIT, ANNOTATE, FILL, AND SIGN • Edit existing text, typography, images, links, shapes, and tables • Add, replace, crop, align, rotate, and arrange content • Remove image backgrounds and automatically crop subjects • Highlight, underline, strike through, draw, stamp, and comment • Add text boxes, callouts, notes, shapes, and threaded comments • Complete forms, find missing required fields, and add reusable signatures • Create and edit text, checkbox, radio, dropdown, signature, date, and image fields • Permanently redact text, areas, pages, or search results SCAN, READ, AND UNDERSTAND • Scan paper with automatic capture, edge detection, cleanup, crop, filters, and page reordering • Make scans searchable with optional OCR • Turn selected images into polished PDFs • Reflow fixed or scanned pages into a comfortable reading column • Keep figures beside the text they explain • Customize reading theme, typography, spacing, margins, and alignment • Translate supported languages and listen with on-device Read Aloud • Keep selected passages and useful context with Focus View VOICE NOTES THAT STAY ON THE PAGE • Place and play audio notes anywhere in a PDF • Create searchable on-device transcripts when the required speech model is available MAKE FLAT FORMS FILLABLE • Detect likely text, checkbox, and signature fields in flat or printed forms • Review every detected field before applying it • Use Form Assist to review suggested answers from your encrypted profile EVERY PDF TOOL IN ONE PLACE • Reorder, rotate, insert, duplicate, replace, extract, merge, split, or delete pages • Compress PDFs while preserving selectable text and vector graphics • Resize mixed pages to standard paper sizes • Add page numbers, N of M, Roman numerals, letters, or Bates numbering • Add or remove an open password • Create and edit PDF outlines and bookmarks • Recognize text with OCR and convert Word documents to PDF • Create PDFs from paper, journal, planner, graph, and project templates • Present PDF pages or Workspace Frames full screen • Save, print, flatten, share, or export the finished result Join more than 25 million downloads worldwide and move from document to outcome with PDF Max. Some advanced features require PDF Max PREMIUM. PDF MAX PREMIUM SUBSCRIPTION Payment will be charged to your Apple Account when the purchase is confirmed. Subscriptions renew automatically unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current subscription period. You can manage or cancel your subscription in your Apple Account settings. Any unused portion of a free trial will be forfeited when a subscription is purchased, where applicable. Privacy Policy: https://mobeera.ai/privacy Terms: https://mobeera.ai/terms
PDF Vault
This ultra-lightweight application offers a comprehensive suite of PDF tools, including text-to-speech functionality, digital signing, document scanning, organization, and instant translation. It's designed for efficiency and ease of use, saving device space while enhancing productivity for work, study, or personal tasks.
- Text-to-speech for PDFs
- Digital document signing
- Scan paper documents to PDF
- Organize and manage PDF files
- Instant document translation
- Ultra-lightweight and fast
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Your private PDF workspace, built for people who take their documents seriously. Ask your PDFs questions, understand complex documents, translate, scan, sign, listen, and manage your files in one lightweight app. PDF Vault combines powerful PDF tools with a privacy-first approach: your documents stay on your device. ASK YOUR PDF ANYTHING Have a long report, contract, research paper, manual, or other document? Just ask. Ask PDF lets you ask questions about the content of your document and get answers based on the information inside it. Find important details, understand complex sections, summarize information, and explore your documents without searching through page after page. Your documents stay private and are processed on your device. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Your documents are personal. PDF Vault is designed with privacy at its core. Your PDF data never leaves your device. No document uploads are required for the core PDF experience. Your files remain under your control while you work with them. ALL THE PDF TOOLS YOU NEED Listen to PDFs Turn your documents into spoken audio with built-in text-to-speech. Listen while working, commuting, studying, or simply when you prefer to hear rather than read. Translate PDFs Translate documents and understand content in other languages without leaving your PDF workspace. Scan documents Turn paper documents into digital PDFs using your device camera. Built-in OCR helps make scanned documents searchable and usable. Sign PDFs Sign documents quickly and conveniently. Add your signature and complete documents without printing them. Read and organize Open, read, manage, and organize your PDF files in a clean, focused workspace designed to stay out of your way. LIGHTWEIGHT AND FOCUSED PDF Vault is built to give you the tools you actually need without turning your device into a document-management maze. Whether you are working with contracts, invoices, academic papers, reports, forms, manuals, or personal documents, PDF Vault keeps everything you need close at hand. FOR WORK, STUDY, AND EVERYDAY DOCUMENTS Use PDF Vault at work to understand reports and contracts. Use it at university to explore research papers and study materials. Use it at home to manage forms, manuals, receipts, and other important documents. ONE PRIVATE WORKSPACE FOR YOUR PDFs Read. Ask. Translate. Scan. Sign. Listen. Organize. PDF Vault brings essential PDF tools together while keeping privacy at the center of the experience. PDF Vault Unlimited gives you unlimited access to all PDF Vault features while directly supporting our mission to provide the best privacy-first PDF tool where your data never leaves your device. Terms of Service: https://macmonsters.com/pdf-reader-terms-of-service.html
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: PDF Vault at 5.0 against PDF Max's 4.5. PDF Vault also leads on review sentiment (50% vs 35%). PDF Max's advantage is ratings volume (1.2K vs 3). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases 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
Both are free to download. PDF Max sells 10 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per 7 days and PDF Vault sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
PDF Vault holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: PDF Max has 1.2K ratings behind it against 3, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 35% of PDF Max's written reviews are positive against 50% of PDF Vault's.
PDF Max ships an update monthly, PDF Vault every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 22, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | PDF Max | PDF Vault |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (1.2K ratings) | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 35.4% of reviews | 50.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 1.2K — better | 3 |
| Update frequency | Monthly | Every 3 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac | iPhone, iPad, Mac |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 — better | 18.1 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 266 MB | 4 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Mobeera | Dmytro Skorokhod |
Customer experience
PDF Max
PDF Vault
Bugs and requests
PDF Max
Reported bugs
4 issues- Disappearing documents and annotations
- Incompatibility with newer devices
- Crashes on launch
- Unreliable file saving
Requested features
5 requests- Dark mode option
- Ability to edit/delete annotations
- Better integration with cloud storage
- Split-screen viewing for PDFs
- Improved handwriting recognition
PDF Vault
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
PDF Max
- Premium Subscription (1 week)$1.997 Days
- One year premium$34.991 Year
- Yearly Onboarding Offer7 Days trial$34.991 Year
- Standard Annotating Package$0.99
- Cloud Access Package$1.99
- Advanced Annotating Package$3.99
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- Form Filling Package$3.99
- Pro Package$4.99
- Premium Package (Update)$4.99
- Premium Package (New User)$9.99
PDF Vault
- Mox PDF Tool Unlimited Monthly7 Days trial$4.991 Month
- Mox PDF Tool Unlimited Annually7 Days trial$19.991 Year









