Comparison

PDF Max vs DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate

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

Head to head
About

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.

Highlights
  • Read and annotate PDFs
  • Fill and sign PDF forms
  • Handwriting and text markup
  • Manage PDF pages
  • Cloud storage integration
  • Voice annotations
Features
Read full description

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

About

DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate

This comprehensive PDF editor offers over 40 tools to modify, merge, compress, and secure your documents. Convert between various formats, perform OCR, and even translate PDFs while preserving layout. It's an all-in-one solution for managing your PDF files efficiently.

Highlights
  • Edit PDF text, images, and shapes
  • Merge and reorder PDF files
  • Compress PDF file size
  • Sign documents digitally
  • Convert PDF to/from multiple formats
  • Perform OCR on scanned PDFs
  • Add watermarks and passwords
Features
Read full description

All-in-one PDF tools - A reliable, intuitive and productive PDF Software, get 40+ PDF tools, such as EDIT: With this tool you can edit existing PDF text, add image, form, whiteout, shape and more with ease, you can even do “freestyle” on your PDF. Merge: Simply open your document in Merge PDF and combine as many PDF files as you want. Combine & Reorder, Compress: Reduce the file size of your document while keeping visual quality. Alternate & Mix, Bates Numbering, Delete Pages: With this tool you can rearrange, rotate or remove one or several pages with ease. Crop: Crop white margins or preview PDF pages and select crop areas Sign: need to sign document on the go? No problem, sign document right on your phone anytime, anywhere. Grayscale, Header & Footer, N-Up, N-up & PDF Imposition. Print multiple pages per sheet per paper. Invoice Generator, Protect, Secure PDF files for free by adding a password that will prevent people from being able to copy or print Rotate: Rotate your PDF files as you want. Rotate multiple PDF at same time defining degrees. Repair, Resize, Unlock, Remove PDF password security, giving you the freedom to use your PDFs as you want. Watermark, Choose an image or a text and add it to your PDF document. Select position, transparency or typography for the best result. Translate: Instantly translate and preserve the layout of any document format into any language. FREE up to 5 pages! CONVERT: Convert PDF to JPG, PDF to Word, PDF to Excel, PDF to PPT, PDF to EPUB, PDF to Text, JPG to PDF, PPT to PDF, Word to PDF, HTML to PDF, EPUB to PDF. PDF to PDF/A: Convert PDF documents to PDF/A for archiving and long-term preservation. OCR PDF: Turn any scanned PDF into searchable PDF with high accuracy. Extract Pages, Extract pages from your PDF document with high quality. Split Split PDF pages or extract pages to multiple PDF documents with high quality. You can Split in half, by size or by pages! User Privacy Policy https://deftpdf.com/policy App Terms of Use (EULA) https://deftpdf.com/terms

Screenshots

PDF Max4 screens
DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate at 5.0 against PDF Max's 4.5. DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate also leads on update cadence (weekly vs monthly) and review sentiment (50% vs 35%). PDF Max's advantage is ratings volume (1.2K vs 7). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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 Max sells 10 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per 7 days and DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate sells 23 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate 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 7, 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 DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

PDF Max ships an update monthly, DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate weekly. Both last shipped on September 24, 2026.

Scorecard5 real differences · 5 level
PDF Max versus DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPDF MaxDeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.5 (1.2K ratings)5.0 (7 ratings) — better
Positive reviews35.4% of reviews50.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings1.2K — better7
Update frequencyMonthlyWeekly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, MaciPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS18.015.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size266 MB102 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperMobeeraSictec Infotech

Customer experience

PDF Max

All ratings1,177 ratings
Positive87.9%
Neutral2.5%
Negative9.5%
Written reviews189 reviews
Positive35.4%
Neutral7.4%
Negative57.1%

DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate

All ratings7 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews2 reviews
Positive50.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative50.0%

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

DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

10 purchases

PDF Max

Subscriptions3
  • Premium Subscription (1 week)$1.997 Days
  • One year premium$34.991 Year
  • Yearly Onboarding Offer7 Days trial$34.991 Year
One-time7
  • Standard Annotating Package$0.99
  • Cloud Access Package$1.99
  • Advanced Annotating Package$3.99
Show 4 more
  • Form Filling Package$3.99
  • Pro Package$4.99
  • Premium Package (Update)$4.99
  • Premium Package (New User)$9.99
23 purchases

DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate

Subscriptions2
  • Monthly Pro Plan$4.991 Month
  • Yearly Pro Plan$49.991 Year
One-time21
  • Translate file$0.99
  • Translate file$91.00
  • Translate file$92.00
Show 18 more
  • Translate file$93.00
  • Translate file$96.00
  • Translate file$97.00
  • Translate file$98.00
  • Translate file$99.00
  • Translate file$374.99
  • Translate file2 variants$379.99
  • Translate file2 variants$384.99
  • Translate file$390.00
  • Translate file$399.00
  • Translate file$399.99
  • Translate file$449.99
  • Translate file$499.99
  • Translate file$599.99
  • Translate file$699.99
  • Translate file$799.99
  • Translate file$899.99
  • Translate file$999.99

Questions

Is PDF Max free?
PDF Max is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate free?
DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, PDF Max or DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate?
DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate is rated higher. PDF Max averages 4.5 out of 5 from 1.2K ratings, while DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate averages 5.0 from 7 ratings.
Do PDF Max or DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate have ads?
Neither PDF Max nor DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate shows ads.
Which is updated more often, PDF Max or DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate?
PDF Max ships an update monthly, and DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate weekly. Most recently, PDF Max was updated on September 24, 2026 and DeftPDF PDF Edit, Annotate on September 24, 2026.

Other comparisons