Comparison

Libreto vs PDF Studio

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

Head to head
About

Libreto

This app is a versatile digital studio for note-taking, planning, sketching, and PDF editing. It offers on-device AI for document analysis and summarization, with robust drawing and writing tools for iPad users and streamlined PDF editing for iPhone.

Highlights
  • On-device AI for PDF and notebook analysis
  • Full drawing studio with layers and pressure brushes
  • Customizable planners and notebook templates
  • Comprehensive PDF annotation and editing tools
  • Handwriting recognition and conversion
  • Lecture recording with transcription and summarization
Features
Read full description

Libreto is a full drawing studio, digital notebook, planner, and PDF editor for iPad, and a streamlined PDF editor and notes app for iPhone. Private by design, with on-device AI included, and one fair price. LEARN IT IN MINUTES A 2-minute tour on first launch, then Help & Tutorials: step-by-step guides for every part of the app, each with a Try it button that takes you straight there. LIBRETO INTELLIGENCE, ON YOUR DEVICE Ask questions about any PDF or notebook and get answers with tappable page citations; each conversation is saved for next time. Summarize a document, a page range, or a selection. Turn any document into flashcards and quizzes with spaced-repetition review, or import a deck from Anki or CSV. Record a lecture, then transcribe and summarize it on-device, and tap any line to jump the audio to that moment. Have any PDF or note read aloud, page by page. Search inside every PDF, note, and transcript in your library. All of it runs with Apple Intelligence, right on your device: nothing uploaded, nothing metered, no AI credits. Prefer no AI? One switch hides every AI button. LIBRETO EVERYWHERE Send a PDF, photo, or text file from Files, Mail, or Safari straight into your library, or drag it in from another app on iPad. Start a Quick Note from the + menu, the app icon, Siri, Shortcuts, or ⌘N. Your documents show up in Spotlight. Keyboard shortcuts for undo, find, page turns, zoom, and export. DRAW & SKETCH (iPad) A full drawing canvas with pressure brushes, layers, blend modes, and a saved color palette. Real symmetry: vertical, horizontal, both axes, or radial. Smudge actual pixels at full resolution. Pro adjustments and filters: hue, curves, gradient map, blurs, halftone, chromatic aberration, and more. Pinch to zoom, add text, import photos to trace or paint over, export as PNG or PDF. Apple Pencil Pro: squeeze for brushes, double-tap to swap brush and eraser. NOTEBOOKS FOR APPLE PENCIL (iPad) Lined, dot grid, grid, graph, Cornell, and to-do paper, or import any photo as your own. Search your handwriting and convert it to text on-device, in 20+ languages, in notebooks and in the ink you write on PDFs. Write large in the Zoom Writing window and let the ink land small and neat. Add stickers, washi tape, photos, and AI art with Image Playground. No Pencil handy? Write with a finger. On iPhone, take handwritten or typed notes; iPhone does not support Apple Pencil. TEXT DOCUMENTS Prefer to type? Text Documents with markdown, headings, and checklists you can tick in the preview. PLANNERS, YOUR WAY (iPad) Six planners: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Scheduling, Personal, and Pro, with real calendar dates and a tappable table of contents. Add habit, goal, schedule, dashboard, and journal pages. Portrait or landscape, Warm or Dark theme. Elegant cover designs you can recolor, replace with your photo, or generate with Image Playground. PDF TOOLS (iPad and iPhone) Highlights, ink, shapes, stickers, and signatures, with undo and redo for every mark. Apple Pencil Pro squeezes for the tool palette and clicks when a shape snaps. Make scans searchable with on-device OCR. Clean up photographed pages with Scan Enhance. Redact for real: the hidden text is destroyed, not just covered, across a whole document at once. Export as PDF, image, text, Word (RTF), or Markdown. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No ads. No tracking. No third-party AI. Your work stays on your devices, with optional private iCloud sync and App Lock with Face ID. MEMBERSHIP Unlock every premium feature for $19.99/year with a 3-day free trial, or $2.99/month. Prefer not to subscribe? Buy Libreto once for $59.99 and keep every feature, including future updates, forever. Terms of Use (Apple standard EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

PDF Studio

Features
Read full description

PDF Studio is the all-in-one PDF app that works entirely on your device. No account, no ads, no tracking — your files never leave your iPhone or iPad. READ & MARK UP • Fast, smooth reader with search, bookmarks and a page thumbnail grid • Highlight, underline, strike through and draw with Apple Pencil or your finger • Add text, shapes, arrows, sticky notes and a date stamp • Sign with your finger and reuse saved signatures • Custom stamps, Night and Sepia modes, a clean Reading View and Read Aloud SCAN & CREATE • Scan documents with the camera and clean up the edges • Turn photos into a PDF • Make scans searchable with on-device OCR CONVERT • PDF to Word, plain text or images • Images to PDF • Grayscale a PDF to save ink and shrink the file ORGANIZE • Merge, split, reorder, rotate, insert and delete pages • Compress, and batch-compress or merge many PDFs at once • Crop margins, extract images and add Bates numbers • Compare two PDFs side by side and highlight what changed PROTECT • Add or remove a password • Permanently redact text — even every match of a word at once • Watermarks and page numbers YOUR LIBRARY • Star favorites for quick access and search every PDF at once • Fill in forms • Save to Files / iCloud Drive, plus a Home Screen widget for one-tap scanning • Back up your whole library to one file and restore it on another device 100% ON-DEVICE PRIVACY Everything happens on your device. PDF Studio collects no data — no ads, no tracking, ever. That's the whole point. PDF Studio Pro unlocks every tool with no limits. Every Pro feature works 3 times free — upgrade yearly or once for lifetime. Terms of Use (EULA): https://birsoftware.com/terms.html

Screenshots

Libreto4 screens
PDF Studio4 screens

Verdict

The call

Libreto and PDF Studio are too close to call on the numbers: across 6 compared parameters — price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.

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. Libreto sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month and PDF Studio sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per year. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Libreto ships an update every 10 days, PDF Studio weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 13, 2026 and October 14, 2026 respectively.

ScorecardNo meaningful differences
Libreto versus PDF Studio: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterLibretoPDF Studio
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (1 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings1 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 10 daysWeekly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFreemium—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.0 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size12 MB6 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperJC Mobile App Studio LLCBirkan Aksoy

In-app purchases

2 purchases

Libreto

Subscriptions2
  • Libreto Premium (Monthly)$0.991 Month
  • Libreto Premium (Annual)3 Days trial$7.991 Year
2 purchases

PDF Studio

Subscriptions1
  • PDF Studio Pro$9.991 Year
One-time1
  • PDF Studio Pro (Lifetime)$24.99

Questions

Is Libreto free?
Libreto is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is PDF Studio free?
PDF Studio is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Libreto or PDF Studio have ads?
Neither Libreto nor PDF Studio shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Libreto or PDF Studio?
Libreto ships an update every 10 days, and PDF Studio weekly. Most recently, Libreto was updated on October 13, 2026 and PDF Studio on October 14, 2026.

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