Comparison

PDF Max vs Beamer Notes

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

Beamer Notes

Read full description

Beamer Notes is a two-screen presenter for slide decks made with LaTeX Beamer and “show notes on second screen”. Your iPad shows the current slide, your private speaker notes, and a preview of what’s next — while the projector shows only the slide, cleanly letterboxed on black. Draw with Apple Pencil and every stroke appears on the projector in real time, in exactly the right place. Fingers are free to turn pages, so your palm never leaves a mark. YOUR IPHONE AS A REMOTE Step away from the lectern. Your iPhone shows your speaker notes, the next slide and the timer, turns pages, and aims the laser pointer on the projector. It pairs straight to your iPad — no shared Wi-Fi, no account, nothing to set up. AND A MAC FOR THE TIDYING UP Beamer Notes on the Mac keeps your library in order between talks — folders, colours, renaming, sorting, on a big screen with a keyboard. Everything stays in step with your iPad over iCloud. Presenting remains the iPad’s job. It is free on the Mac App Store, and a Full Version bought on iPad carries over with Restore Purchases. FEATURES • Dual screen over HDMI or AirPlay — the audience sees only the slide, never your notes or controls. • Apple Pencil ink with live mirroring, through the system drawing palette: pen, monoline, fountain pen, pencil and marker; a pixel eraser and an object eraser; lasso to move what you have already drawn; a ruler for straight lines; any colour, any width. Plus a laser pointer with an optional comet trail. • Tabs — keep several decks open at once, drag to reorder, and they reopen where you left off. • Speaker notes shown full-width with pinch-to-zoom, plus a next-slide preview. • Automatic layout detection for notes on the right, left, top, or bottom — 16:9 and 4:3 — with a manual override when you need it. • Count-up timer and an adjustable countdown with an on-screen “time’s up” alert only you can see. • Navigate by tap, swipe, on-screen arrows, hardware keyboard, USB or Bluetooth presenter clickers, or your iPhone. • Tappable table-of-contents and \hyperlink jumps inside the PDF. • Thumbnail overview that marks the pages you’ve annotated. • An in-app library with coloured folders, synced through iCloud and organisable on your Mac; import via Files, AirDrop, or the share sheet, and a revised PDF with the same name can replace the old one. Plain PDFs work too. • Decks are fetched to the device in the background, so they open with no network at all — and anything not yet downloaded is marked in the library. • Your ink is saved automatically and survives quitting the app. Built for lecture-hall reliability. No account, no tracking, no data collection. Free to try with three of your own PDFs. The built-in tutorials are always free, and reopening a deck you have already used never counts again. Need more? Add ten or thirty decks whenever you like, or unlock unlimited decks forever with a single purchase. TIP FOR PROJECTORS Connect the display before you begin and stay in Beamer Notes for the talk. On iPadOS 26 and 27 the system sometimes does not hand the external screen back to an app that has been in the background; if the projector starts mirroring your iPad, quit Beamer Notes and open it again with the display connected.

Screenshots

PDF Max4 screens
Beamer Notes1 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Beamer Notes at every 3 days against PDF Max's monthly. On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support 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 Beamer Notes sells 3 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

PDF Max ships an update monthly, Beamer Notes every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on October 22, 2026 and October 13, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference · 9 level
PDF Max versus Beamer Notes: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPDF MaxBeamer Notes
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.5 (1.2K ratings) — better—
Positive reviews35.4% of reviews—
Number of ratings1.2K — better—
Update frequencyMonthlyEvery 3 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, MaciPhone, iPad, Mac
Requires iOS18.018.0
Further details — not scored
Size266 MB2 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperMobeeraWei Chen

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

Beamer Notes

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
3 purchases

Beamer Notes

One-time3
  • Add 10 Decks$1.99
  • Add 30 Decks$4.99
  • Full Version$9.99

Questions

Is PDF Max free?
PDF Max is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Beamer Notes free?
Beamer Notes is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do PDF Max or Beamer Notes have ads?
Neither PDF Max nor Beamer Notes shows ads.
Which is updated more often, PDF Max or Beamer Notes?
PDF Max ships an update monthly, and Beamer Notes every 3 days. Most recently, PDF Max was updated on October 22, 2026 and Beamer Notes on October 13, 2026.

Other comparisons