PDF Studio vs Foldleaf Reader
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side ā with what reviewers say about each.
PDF Studio
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Every PDF tool you need ā 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 ā no subscription. SCAN & CREATE ⢠Scan documents with automatic edge detection ⢠Turn photos or typed text into clean PDFs ⢠Make scans searchable with on-device OCR EDIT & ORGANIZE ⢠Merge, split, reorder, rotate and delete pages ⢠Compress to a target file size ⢠Crop, add margins, page numbers and watermarks CONVERT ⢠PDF to Word, plain text or images ā and back FILL, SIGN & PROTECT ⢠Fill forms and sign by hand or with a saved signature ⢠Build fillable forms and extract form data to CSV ⢠Password-protect, unlock and permanently redact ⢠Certify & seal a document and verify it later ā fully offline ON-DEVICE AI ⢠Summarize, chat with and translate a PDF ā nothing is uploaded MEASURE & MORE ⢠Distance, area and angle with scale ⢠Beautiful on iPhone, iPad and Mac, with iCloud sync for your own library WHY PDF STUDIO ⢠Private by design ā everything runs on your device ⢠Pay once, own it forever ā no subscription required ⢠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
Foldleaf Reader
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Foldleaf Reader is a reader and notetaker for PDFs and EPUBs that turns pages like paper, trims the margins off every page, and lets you write and highlight with the Apple Pencil ā on iPad, iPhone and iPhone Duo. PAGES THAT TURN ⢠Page Curl: drag a page from its edge and it follows your finger, the next one waiting underneath. ⢠Vertical Page Curl: a page hinged along its top, turned upward like a wall calendar. ⢠Or flick through pages, scroll down one long column, or scroll across the pages side by side. ⢠One page or two side by side, chosen for you whenever the window is wide enough. MARGINS GONE ⢠Crop View trims every page of a PDF once ā drag a rectangle round what matters, and the whole document opens that way from then on. ⢠Most papers waste a third of each page on white space. Crop it, and every page is bigger. ⢠Zoom Lock holds your framing from page to page; Horizontal and Vertical Zoom Lock keep a zoomed-in column steady as you scroll. WRITE AND HIGHLIGHT ⢠Four pens ā Pen, Fountain Pen, Pencil and Marker ā with six colours and six nib widths, each responding to the Pencil's pressure and tilt in its own way. ⢠Hold the pen still at the end of a line and it snaps straight. ⢠A highlighter in five colours: select text, or simply sweep across the lines, in PDFs and EPUBs alike. ⢠Double-tap the Apple Pencil for the rubber. Pick up the pen or highlighter just by bringing the Pencil to the page. ⢠Share a PDF with your ink and highlights written in as standard annotations, readable in Preview, Acrobat and other apps. PAPERS AND BOOKS, BUILT IN ⢠Browse arXiv inside the app and save a paper in one tap ā it arrives named for its number, authors and title. ⢠Project Gutenberg's tens of thousands of free books, saved as EPUBs with their illustrations. ⢠A web browser that keeps any PDF or EPUB you tap. ⢠Or add files from Files and iCloud Drive. Edit a PDF in place, and your annotations are saved into the original wherever it lives. A LIBRARY THAT STAYS TIDY ⢠Folders, favourites and recents, sorted and viewed the way each folder likes. ⢠Search titles and authors, search inside a book, and name your bookmarks. ⢠Deleted books wait in the Bin for a week, in case you change your mind. MADE FOR READING ⢠Controls along the top, or in a column down the side so a tall page keeps its height. ⢠Paper colours from white to beige to black, and an appearance that follows the system or doesn't. ⢠Fullscreen with a small corner cluster, keyboard shortcuts, and trackpad and mouse support. ⢠Left-handed layout, Keep Screen On, and support for VoiceOver. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account, no sign-in, no tracking and no analytics. Your library stays on your device. TRY EVERYTHING FREE Every feature is free for 14 days. After that, reading, your library, paged view and the plain backgrounds stay free ā and so does everything you have already marked or cropped. Page curl, scrolling, the zoom locks, paper colours, Crop View, the pen, the highlighter, side controls and Back and Forward unlock with a single purchase: once, not a subscription, and on your iPhone and iPad alike. Questions and suggestions: foldleafreader@gmail.com
Screenshots
Verdict
PDF Studio and Foldleaf Reader are too close to call on the numbers: across 6 compared parameters ā price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases among them ā neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.
Scored on Price Ā· Rating Ā· Positive reviews Ā· Number of ratings Ā· Update frequency Ā· Ads Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Monetization Ā· Best chart rank Ā· Devices Ā· Requires iOS
Both are free to download. PDF Studio sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per year and Foldleaf Reader sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
PDF Studio ships an update weekly, Foldleaf Reader fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on November 13, 2026 and November 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | PDF Studio | Foldleaf Reader |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Weekly ā better | Fortnightly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac ā better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 ā better | 18.0 |
| Further details ā not scored | ||
| Size | 20 MB | 38 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Birkan Aksoy | Tiann-Tevong You |
In-app purchases
PDF Studio
- PDF Studio Pro$9.991 Year
- PDF Studio Pro (Lifetime)$24.99
Foldleaf Reader
- 14-Day TrialFree
- Unlock Foldleaf Reader$9.99









