Comparison

PDF nano vs PDFPad+

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

Head to head
About

PDF nano

Edit, translate, and manage PDF documents with a focus on on-device privacy. This app offers tools for scanning, converting, annotating, and organizing your files locally.

Highlights
  • Read, organize, and manage PDFs
  • Offline PDF translation with layout preservation
  • Scan documents and create PDFs
  • Convert PDFs to Word, Excel, or images
  • OCR for Arabic and English text
  • Add signatures and annotations
  • Remove hidden metadata for privacy
Features
Read full description

PDF nano is a comprehensive, professional PDF reader, editor, translator, and manager engineered for speed and privacy. Combining powerful on-device tools with Apple Intelligence, PDF nano delivers a unified workflow tailored for iPhone, foldable iPhone Duo, and iPad—handling your contracts, reports, and paperwork with top-tier security. Key Features: 1. Foldable iPhone Duo & iPad Experience: • Seven Postures Adaptation: Automatic layout across foldable and dual-display devices. • Dual-Screen Book Mode: Side-by-side reading with automatic hinge isolation to prevent content clipping. • Tabletop Mode: Bottom screen transforms into a control deck for drawing, signing, and scrubbing without covering the document. • Dynamic iPad Sidebar: Instant browsing of thumbnails, outlines, and bookmarks beside your canvas. • High-Contrast Navigation Pill: Prominent back button for effortless touch accessibility and zero status-bar overlap. 2. AI Document Assistant (Beta): • Instant executive summaries of lengthy reports, extracting decisions and action items. • Precision risk analysis and contractual obligation detection. • Verifiable Q&A with answers grounded in direct textual citations from your document. • Encrypted Cloud Privacy: Powered by Apple Intelligence and Private Cloud Compute (PCC) to process documents securely without logging or storing data. *Note: AI features require Apple Intelligence-compatible devices. 3. Offline Document Translation (Beta): • Full-document PDF translation entirely offline while preserving layouts, fonts, and tables. • Batch approval to accelerate processing for files up to 100 pages. • Granular paragraph review with selective editing for each translated block. *Note: Translation operates fully on-device. Machine translations may contain errors. 4. Advanced Reading & Viewing: • Dual-Page Continuous View: True book-like reading with native RTL Arabic and LTR layout. • Distraction-Free Guard: Locks editing overlays during reading mode to prevent accidental markups. • Fast-Scrub Vertical Scroll: High-velocity thumb scrubber for jumping through hundreds of pages. • Full Interface Adaptation: Precision safe-area integration around the Dynamic Island and status bar. • Smart Double-Tap Zoom: Rapid focus scaling with an intuitive floating navigation capsule. • OCR Visual Search: Direct in-document search across scanned PDFs with fuzzy and multi-word query support. 5. Conversion & Smart Scanning: • High-Fidelity PDF to Word (.docx) conversion preserving tables and formatting. • Accurate Table Extraction to Excel (.xlsx) with automatic data type inference. • Camera Document Scanner to digitize receipts and paperwork into clean PDFs. • High-quality PDF-to-Image and multi-image-to-PDF conversion pipelines. 6. Editing, Signing & Organization: • Digital signatures: Create, position, and cryptographically sign contracts and forms. • Complete markup suite: Freehand drawing, highlighters, custom text boxes, and annotations. • Page management: Reorder, rotate, extract, or delete pages with fluid drag-and-drop. • Merge & Split: Combine multiple PDFs into one or split large documents into individual files. • Smart PDF Compression: Reduce file size for rapid sharing via email and messaging apps. 7. Industry-Leading Privacy & Security: • 100% On-Device Processing: Reading, editing, translation, OCR, and conversion run locally without uploading files to external servers. • Cryptographic Apple Privacy: AI Assistant requests are strictly restricted to Apple Private Cloud Compute (PCC). • Visual face and sensitive data blurring with hidden metadata sanitization. • Password encryption, native AirPrint support, and Home Screen widgets. Free tier includes daily tool quotas. Unlock unlimited access via in-app purchase. Standard Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/

About

PDFPad+

Features
Read full description

PDFpad+ is the fast, private way to work with PDFs on iPhone and iPad. Everything happens on your device — there are no accounts, no uploads, and no tracking of any kind. VIEW: - Smooth continuous scrolling or page-by-page reading - Search inside documents, jump by thumbnails or table of contents - Night mode for comfortable reading in the dark - Opens password-protected PDFs SCAN - Capture multi-page documents with automatic edge detection - On-device text recognition makes every scan searchable — a scan you can actually find again - Reorder, rotate, retake, and delete pages before saving CONVERT: - Turn photos into PDFs and PDF pages into images - Merge documents, split by page ranges, reorder and rotate pages - Compress bulky scans and see the size savings before you keep them - Turn plain text into a clean, typeset PDF SIGN: - Draw your signature once — with a finger or Apple Pencil — and reuse it anywhere Or type it in an elegant cursive style - Place signatures, initials, dates, and text on any page, then save a flattened signed copy - Fills standard PDF form fields too

Screenshots

PDF nano4 screens
PDFPad+4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: PDFPad+ at none against PDF nano's 1. PDF nano's advantage is update cadence (every 3 days vs fortnightly) and iOS requirement (18.6 vs 26.0). On price, 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 nano sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. PDFPad+ asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

PDF nano ships an update every 3 days, PDFPad+ fortnightly. Both last shipped on October 24, 2026.

Scorecard3 real differences · 6 level
PDF nano versus PDFPad+: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPDF nanoPDFPad+
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (1 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings1 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 3 days — betterFortnightly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS18.6 — better26.0
Further details — not scored
Size25 MB12 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperThamer MohammedAbdulrhman Alhoshani

In-app purchases

1 purchases

PDF nano

One-time1
  • PDFnano Pro Lifetime$19.99
None

PDFPad+

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is PDF nano free?
PDF nano is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is PDFPad+ free?
PDFPad+ is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do PDF nano or PDFPad+ have ads?
Neither PDF nano nor PDFPad+ shows ads.
Which is updated more often, PDF nano or PDFPad+?
PDF nano ships an update every 3 days, and PDFPad+ fortnightly. Most recently, PDF nano was updated on October 24, 2026 and PDFPad+ on October 24, 2026.

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