Resecta vs PDF Studio
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Resecta
Securely remove sensitive information from PDFs by redacting text, not just covering it. This open-source app verifies redacted documents before sharing, ensuring privacy and data integrity on-device.
- Text redaction, not just covering
- Search by text and regular expressions
- Scan for personal information
- Manual rectangle drawing for redaction
- Verification checks before sharing
- Private by design, no network requests
- Supports image to PDF conversion
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Resecta is a free, open-source iPhone app that redacts PDFs on-device and verifies the output. A black box drawn over text can leave the text underneath readable; Resecta is designed to remove the text in the regions you mark, not just cover it, then checks the redacted PDF before you share. There is no subscription and no account. What to redact • Search by text, regular expression or a list of terms, and save the searches you reuse. • Scan looks for 17 kinds of personal information, including names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, Social Security numbers, and card and account numbers (many are US formats). • Draw a rectangle by hand over anything else, or cover a page with Mark Whole Page. Search and Scan results arrive unselected; nothing is redacted without your selection. Redact Marks show what will be removed. Tap Redact and Resecta rebuilds the PDF from page images, with the marked regions overwritten in the pixels. Secure Rasterization produces image-only output. Searchable Redaction keeps the text outside your redactions searchable, for PDFs that have a text layer. Check before you share Verification runs 7 checks on Secure Rasterization output and 12 on Searchable Redaction output, including text extraction, OCR, a search of the file's bytes, a metadata check, a re-run of the searches you applied, and a detection sweep. What they report is listed, and sharing a file with reported issues asks you to confirm. Verification is a check, not a substitute for your review. Private by design No accounts, no analytics, no data collection. The app makes no network requests of its own, and you can use it in airplane mode. Good to know • PDFs up to 50 MB and 500 pages. A password-protected PDF opens with its password; the redacted copy is not password-protected. • JPEG, PNG and HEIC images open too, up to 20 at a time from Photos, or one at a time from Files or by dropping it onto an open document. Each becomes one page of a new PDF; the photo's metadata, such as location, is not carried into it, and the redacted copy is always a PDF. • A file the app cannot read in full, or one that carries document JavaScript or a launch action, is refused at import, and the app says why. • Resecta doesn't store your documents or edits; share or save the redacted copy to keep it. • Name detection uses an on-device language model from iOS. Where it is unavailable, name results are reduced and the app says so. Free and open source under Apache-2.0. Source: github.com/Merlin1A/resecta
PDF Studio
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PDF Studio is a calm, fast PDF editor and scanner. It is completely free: no ads, no subscription, no account. Your documents stay on your device. LIBRARY • Recent documents, folders, tags and favorites • Full-text search that finds words inside your PDFs and shows where they appear • Drag one document onto another to merge them • Grid or list view, trash with 30-day recovery MARKUP • Highlight, underline or strike through by dragging across text • Pen, rectangle, oval and arrow — shapes snap neatly into place • Sticky notes in four colors • Tap with two fingers to undo, three fingers to redo SIGN AND FILL • Saved signatures, placed with corner handles to move and resize • Add a date stamp under your signature with one tap • Fill PDF forms or place text and checkmarks anywhere PAGES • Reorder pages by dragging, rotate, split, insert blank pages • Drag pages in from other documents • Deleted pages can be restored for five seconds SCAN • Scan paper with the document camera, fix perspective and choose a color mode • On-device text recognition (OCR) turns scans into searchable PDFs READING • Night reading, smart zoom on double-tap, bookmarks and contents • Comfort Reading with adjustable text and read-aloud PRIVACY • Everything is processed on your device, nothing is uploaded • Lock the app with Face ID, protect PDFs with a password, back up your library Available in 14 languages.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is iOS requirement: PDF Studio at 17.0 against Resecta's 26.0. On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Resecta ships an update every 3 weeks, PDF Studio every 5 weeks. Both last shipped on November 10, 2026.
| Parameter | Resecta | PDF Studio |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 3 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks — better | Every 5 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 49 MB | 4 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Jesse Brookins | yusuf hilal |
In-app purchases
Resecta
No in-app purchases
PDF Studio
No in-app purchases









