Comparison

PDF Max vs PDF Cabinet

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 offers a comprehensive suite of tools for editing, annotating, and organizing PDF documents. It allows users to extract key information, create study materials, and fill out forms. Advanced features include OCR scanning, voice notes, and PDF page management.

Highlights
  • Edit text, images, and links in PDFs
  • Annotate with highlights, stamps, and comments
  • Scan documents with OCR capabilities
  • Create and fill PDF forms
  • Organize and study content with Cards
  • Export work to Markdown, PDF, or Word
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

PDF Cabinet

This application offers a streamlined PDF experience for reading and annotating documents. It focuses on essential features with an intuitive interface, making it easy to mark up PDFs, share annotations, and collaborate in real-time with others. Optimized for performance, it handles large documents efficiently.

Highlights
  • Effortless PDF annotation
  • Intuitive user interface
  • Fast document review with thumbnails
  • Annotations sharing
  • Real-time collaboration
  • Quick note taking
Features
Read full description

THINGS WE ARE PROUD OF - Really effortless PDF annotation - Only the most essential functionality - don't lose yourself in hundreds of buttons - Intuitive user interface that allows you to do exactly what you want - Fast and easy document skimming and review with thumbnails sidebar - Ultimate performance – optimized for really large documents (within reason, of course) - Annotations sharing - send annotated documents to anyone, and mark up will show up in any other reader - Interaction with other Cabinet users - send annotations only to your friends or colleagues using Cabinet – much faster, less traffic - Real-time collaboration with your friends or colleagues – annotate the same document together from several iPads EVEN MORE GREAT THINGS IN CABINET - Amazing and intuitive dynamic annotation menu - Empty notebooks for quick note taking or doodling - Pen and Paper Games for relaxing during non-working hours - Sending multiple documents attached in a single e-mail - Easy work with various document formats - such as .doc, .xls, .ppt and others Did we tell you already that Cabinet is really easy to use? Try it out yourself!

Screenshots

PDF Max4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: PDF Max at 4.5 against PDF Cabinet's 3.8. PDF Max also leads on ratings volume (1.2K vs 57). PDF Cabinet's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 10) and review sentiment (66% vs 35%). On price, update cadence, ads 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. PDF Cabinet asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

PDF Max holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 3.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: PDF Max has 1.2K ratings behind it against 57, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 35% of PDF Max's written reviews are positive against 66% of PDF Cabinet's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

PDF Max ships an update monthly, PDF Cabinet every 5 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and November 1, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard6 real differences · 4 level
PDF Max versus PDF Cabinet: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPDF MaxPDF Cabinet
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.5 (1.2K ratings) — better3.8 (57 ratings)
Positive reviews35.4% of reviews66.1% of reviews — better
Number of ratings1.2K — better57
Update frequencyMonthly — betterEvery 5 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFreemiumFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, MaciPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS18.013.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size301 MB75 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperMobeeraBright Nine SIA

Customer experience

PDF Max

All ratings1,178 ratings
Positive87.9%
Neutral2.6%
Negative9.5%
Written reviews189 reviews
Positive35.4%
Neutral7.4%
Negative57.1%

PDF Cabinet

All ratings55 ratings
Positive67.3%
Neutral10.9%
Negative21.8%
Written reviews127 reviews
Positive66.1%
Neutral14.2%
Negative19.7%

User reviews

PDF Max

From 1.2K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Easy to use
  • 👍 Helpful for studies and work
  • 🚀 Fast and efficient
  • 👍 Great for annotating PDFs

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Crashes frequently
  • 🔒 Unreliable cloud sync
  • 💰 Paywall for basic features
  • 🐛 Buggy updates
  • 👎 Poor customer support

PDF Cabinet

From 57 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Smooth performance
  • 👍 Intuitive and user-friendly interface
  • 💡 Excellent annotation tools
  • 🚀 Fast and responsive
  • 👍 Simple and clean design

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Occasional crashes and stability issues
  • 💡 Limited highlighter and pen customization
  • 💡 Lack of iCloud/cloud sync support
  • 🐛 Text disappearing issue
  • 🐛 Slow document loading and navigation

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 Cabinet

Reported bugs

5 issues
  • Randomly deleting files
  • Sync issues causing loss of annotations
  • Crashing when opening large documents
  • Navigation problems when zoomed in
  • Annotations not exporting properly

Requested features

7 requests
  • Add more highlighter and pen color options
  • Implement palm rejection for Apple Pencil
  • Add ability to resize and move annotation tools
  • Improve cloud/sync functionality (iCloud, Dropbox, etc.)
  • Implement vertical scrolling for continuous reading
Show 2 more
  • Add text box annotation feature
  • Improve export/sharing options for annotated documents

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
None

PDF Cabinet

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is PDF Max free?
PDF Max is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is PDF Cabinet free?
PDF Cabinet is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, PDF Max or PDF Cabinet?
PDF Max is rated higher. PDF Max averages 4.5 out of 5 from 1.2K ratings, while PDF Cabinet averages 3.8 from 57 ratings.
Do PDF Max or PDF Cabinet have ads?
Neither PDF Max nor PDF Cabinet shows ads.
Which is updated more often, PDF Max or PDF Cabinet?
PDF Max ships an update monthly, and PDF Cabinet every 5 weeks. Most recently, PDF Max was updated on November 6, 2026 and PDF Cabinet on November 1, 2026.

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