PDF Studio vs FreeBeam
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ with what reviewers say about each.
PDF Studio
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Every PDF tool you need โ 100% on your device. PDF Studio reads, edits, scans, converts, signs and protects PDFs with no account, no cloud upload and no tracking. Your files never leave your iPhone, iPad or Mac. And it's a one-time purchase โ no subscription. SCAN & CREATE โข Scan documents with automatic edge detection โข Turn photos or typed text into clean PDFs โข Make scans searchable with on-device OCR EDIT & ORGANIZE โข Merge, split, reorder, rotate and delete pages โข Compress to a target file size โข Crop, add margins, page numbers and watermarks CONVERT โข PDF to Word, plain text or images โ and back FILL, SIGN & PROTECT โข Fill forms and sign by hand or with a saved signature โข Build fillable forms and extract form data to CSV โข Password-protect, unlock and permanently redact โข Certify & seal a document and verify it later โ fully offline ON-DEVICE AI โข Summarize, chat with and translate a PDF โ nothing is uploaded MEASURE & MORE โข Distance, area and angle with scale โข Beautiful on iPhone, iPad and Mac, with iCloud sync for your own library WHY PDF STUDIO โข Private by design โ everything runs on your device โข Pay once, own it forever โ no subscription required โข No ads, no account, no data collection PDF Studio Pro unlocks every tool with a single purchase or an optional subscription. Terms of Use (EULA): https://birsoftware.com/terms.html
FreeBeam
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Measure and mark up construction drawings on site, in your hand, at the scale the drawing was drawn to. Set the scale once and every length, area and angle you take is real. Nothing you open ever leaves your phone. FreeBeam works on the PDFs you already have. Open a plan from email, from Files, from anywhere iOS can share to, set the scale from the drawing's own dimension string or pick a standard one, and start measuring. Lengths, areas, continuous runs and angles come straight off the sheet. Snapping catches the drawing's real geometry - endpoints, intersections, perpendiculars - so a measurement lands on the line rather than near it, and the loupe shows you exactly where the point is going before you commit it. Mark up as you go. Text, arrows, clouds, dimensions and freehand, in the colours and weights you choose. Everything is editable afterwards: select one item or several, move them, restyle them, undo and redo your way back through the work. Copy and paste markup between drawings. Export the result as a sharp, real PDF. Not a photograph of your drawing - the original vector sheet with your markup on top, so it prints and zooms the way the source did, and anyone can open it. FreeBeam Pro, a one-off purchase with no subscription, adds the rest: unlimited drawings, exports with no watermark, and the tools that take it past measuring. Lay one drawing over another in colour to read a revision at a glance, and flatten the pair into a single sharp sheet. Join several drawings into one document, in the order you choose. Count and tally items by type for a takeoff. Set a datum and read coordinates off the plan, rotate a sheet to site north, and take bearings and distances between points. Built for the people who actually carry drawings: surveyors, site engineers, estimators, builders and setting-out crews. It runs on an iPhone in a pocket and on an iPad on a tailgate, and it works with no signal, because everything happens on the device. Nothing is collected. No account, no sign-in, no analytics, no tracking, no cloud. Your drawings, your markup and your measurements stay on your phone, which matters when the sheet in your hand is a confidential tender. A sample drawing is included, in metric or in feet and inches, with dimensions printed on it you can check your measurements against. Questions or problems: freebeam.support@gmail.com
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is iOS requirement: FreeBeam at 15.0 against PDF Studio's 17.0. On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS
Both are free to download. PDF Studio sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per year and FreeBeam sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
| Parameter | PDF Studio | FreeBeam |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Weekly | โ |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 15.0 โ better |
| Further details โ not scored | ||
| Size | 20 MB | 77 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Birkan Aksoy | Thomas Blaxland |
In-app purchases
PDF Studio
- PDF Studio Pro$9.991 Year
- PDF Studio Pro (Lifetime)$24.99
FreeBeam
- FreeBeam Pro$29.99









