PDF Expert vs Notebloc Scanner
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
PDF Expert
This app allows you to edit, annotate, fill out forms, and convert PDF documents. It offers AI-powered summarization and analysis, along with tools to merge, sign, and protect your files. Work seamlessly across Apple devices with a user-friendly interface.
- Edit PDF text and images
- Annotate and highlight PDFs
- Fill out PDF forms
- Convert files to and from PDF
- AI-powered summarization and analysis
- Merge and combine PDF files
- Sign documents with e-signatures
Read full descriptionHide full description
PDF Expert is a fast and easy PDF app to read, annotate, fill and sign PDF forms, convert files to PDF, and merge, split or compress documents – all in one intuitive app for iPhone, iPad, Mac & Vision Pro. Read PDF files with comfort, highlight and mark up text, fill out forms, sign contracts, create and convert PDFs, and summarize long documents in seconds with AI-powered tools. Unlock unlimited possibilities with PDF Expert Premium and work across all your Apple devices. "PDF Expert is one of my must-have iPad apps and a desktop-class PDF reader." – MacStories "The best app for managing, editing, and reading PDFs on your iPad." – The Sweet Setup ▶ WITH PDF EXPERT, YOU CAN: READ PDFs - PDF reader with Day, Night, and Sepia modes for comfortable reading anytime - Scroll PDFs vertically or horizontally and search text in any document - Open and view PDF files from email, web, Files, or any app via the Share menu - Read PDFs out loud with Text to Speech ANNOTATE AND MARK UP PDFs - Highlight, underline, and strike through text in your PDFs - Mark up documents with pen, shapes, text, notes, and comments - Add stamps such as Approved or Confidential - Record your voice and add audio notes to PDFs FILL AND SIGN PDF FORMS - Fill out PDF forms with text fields, checkboxes, and radio buttons - Sign PDF documents in seconds – draw your signature or add it from an image - Save your signature to sign contracts, agreements, invoices, and applications faster - Fill, sign, and send forms right from your iPhone – no printing or scanning needed - Supports all major form formats, including AcroForms and static XFA forms ***PREMIUM FEATURES*** EDIT PDFs - Edit text directly in a PDF – just as you would in a Word document - Add, replace, and resize images in your PDFs - Add links to other pages or websites - Add outlines to navigate large PDFs CREATE AND CONVERT PDFs - Create PDFs from Word files, images, and other documents - Convert Word to PDF, JPG to PDF, and PNG to PDF in seconds - Convert PDF to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, JPG, PNG, and TXT MERGE, SPLIT AND ORGANIZE PDFs - Merge and combine multiple PDF files into one - Split PDFs and extract pages into a new file - Add, delete, rotate, and reorder pages with thumbnail preview COMPRESS PDFs - Compress PDFs to reduce file size for email and sharing - Shrink large PDF files to save space on your device SUMMARIZE PDFs WITH AI – PDF COPILOT - List Main Points – get key takeaways from any PDF - Summarize – get concise summaries of entire PDFs or annotations - Ask Anything – find details with AI answers and references - Explain – get instant explanations of words or phrases PROTECT YOUR FILES - Password-protect PDF Expert - Redact – permanently black out sensitive information WORK WITH SCANNED DOCUMENTS - Open scanned PDFs to fill out, sign, annotate, and share CONSTRUCTION TOOLS - Scale and measure drawings with the Measure tab - Polygon, polyline, and redline tools MORE FEATURES - Customizable toolbar - Presentation Mode - Print and share PDFs via email or cloud ONE ACCOUNT FOR ALL YOUR APPLE DEVICES One Premium subscription covers PDF Expert on iPhone, iPad, and Mac – no need to buy versions separately. Read more about our terms and conditions here: https://pdfexpert.com/privacy https://pdfexpert.com/terms Don’t hesitate to reach out to us at http://readdle.com/contact
Notebloc Scanner
Digitize your documents and notes with this free scanner app. Easily convert them to PDF or JPG, extract text using OCR, and organize your scans. Perfect for students, professionals, and artists.
- Scan documents to PDF or JPG
- Unlimited document creation
- Batch scanning (multiple pages)
- Text extraction (OCR)
- Scan without watermarks
- Edit and merge documents
Read full descriptionHide full description
Scan documents for free with Notebloc Scanner, the best free document scanner. Use it to scan fast your documents and turn them to PDF or JPG. You can also save and share notes, art, receipts, drawings, etc. It is the preferred scanner app among students and the educational community, artists and widely used by professionals from all fields. Notebloc Scanner App is one of the best and most recommended free scanner apps for your iPhone or iPad. It is the only free scanner offering unlimited usage. Notebloc Scanner App offers 100% free editing tools for PDF documents that are not included in the free version in the other scanner apps. For example: unlimited document creation, multiple pages scan (batch scanning), text extraction (extract text from image using our OCR), share, merge and copy documents. These are the main functionalities of the best free scanner in the App Store: - Scan free documents such as drawings, sketches, images, photos, receipts or invoices. It is very useful for scanning notes since they will become legible and clear: Notebloc: PDF scanner automatically corrects perspective and light conditions in your scanned documents. - This free scanner will allow you to scan several pages consecutively (Batch Scanning). - You can scan documents without watermarks. - With Notebloc Scanner App you can cut and edit images to save them and convert them to PDF. - Add pages to a document is another of the features that you can perform with this intuitive scanning app. - Convert PDF from scanned images and modify the size of the PDFs. -Import images from your devide and convert them to PDF will be very easy and fast with Notebloc PDF scanner. -Notebloc PDF scanner also allows you to extract of text from image, through OCR in English and 15 other languages. Use the feature to extract text from an image and copy, edit or share it. In addition to scanning free documents, Notebloc Free Document Scanner offers you very useful tools for you to have your notes well organized and structured. The document scanner Notebloc will be useful: - Students: With the free scanner, scan your notes and also notes from your teachers. Organize them according to your subjects, and so you will have them organized to study for your exams and be able to review your notes from where you are. - Teachers: Notebloc PDF scanner is a very useful tool to create PDF from notes or photocopies that you want to share with your students. You can use this free scanner to send PDFs for your students. - Professionals: Notebloc Scanner helps you to keep your invoices safe, together with other important documents relative to your activity. Scan to PDF and easily arrange all your documents. Share them with your manager or peers by email directly from your PDF scanner. - Artists: The Notebloc free scanner is your perfect ally if you want to digitize your art and share it online or keep it in your portfolio. You can scan your drawings to edit them. Scanning documents for free has never been so fast and easy! About Notebloc Scanner App: Notebloc is a technology and innovation company from Spain. In order to unite the analog and digital world, in 2016 we developed Notebloc Scanner. Download the best free document scanner. Converting documents to PDF had never been so simple! Terms of service: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: PDF Expert at none against Notebloc Scanner's shown. PDF Expert also leads on ratings volume (216K vs 1.3K) and chart position (#88 vs unranked). Notebloc Scanner's advantage is review sentiment (75% vs 45%) and iOS requirement (14.0 vs 16.0). On price, rating, in-app purchases and monetization model 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. PDF Expert sells 10 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per month and Notebloc Scanner sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.7 for PDF Expert against 4.7 for Notebloc Scanner. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: PDF Expert has 216K ratings behind it against 1.3K, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 45% of PDF Expert's written reviews are positive against 75% of Notebloc Scanner's.
PDF Expert ships an update fortnightly, Notebloc Scanner monthly. The most recent releases landed on October 26, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | PDF Expert | Notebloc Scanner |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (216K ratings) | 4.7 (1.3K ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 45.4% of reviews | 75.5% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 216K — better | 1.3K |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly — better | Monthly |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Best chart rank | #88 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 | 14.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 301 MB | 106 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Readdle Technologies Limited | Notebloc Scanner SCP |
Customer experience
PDF Expert
Notebloc Scanner
User reviews
PDF Expert
From 216K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Fast and responsive
- 👍 Intuitive and user-friendly interface
- 💡 Powerful annotation and editing tools
- 🔒 Seamless cloud integration
- 📚 Excellent for reading and organizing PDFs
Room to improve
- 🐛 Frequent crashes and stability issues
- 🔒 Subscription model for advanced features
- 🔒 Inconsistent pricing and feature changes
- 🔍 Cluttered and confusing UI in latest update
- 🔍 Reduced customization options for annotations
Notebloc Scanner
From 1.3K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Excellent scanning quality
- 👍 Easy and intuitive to use
- 💡 Helpful for digitizing notes and documents
- 🚀 Fast and efficient
- 👍 Useful for work and school
Room to improve
- 🐛 Crashes or freezes after updates
- 💡 Lack of ability to import photos from gallery
- 🐛 Issues with saving or sharing files
- 💡 Limited export options (e.g. no JPG format)
- 🐛 Incompatibility with newer iOS versions
Bugs and requests
PDF Expert
Reported bugs
4 issues- Corrupted PDFs after editing
- Sync issues with cloud storage providers
- Unexpected loss of annotations and edits
- Unreliable performance on older iPad models
Requested features
5 requests- Improved palm rejection for Apple Pencil
- Customizable toolbar and annotation presets
- Better integration with other productivity apps
- More flexible file management and organization
- Ability to create fillable PDF forms
Notebloc Scanner
Reported bugs
4 issues- App crashes when trying to open certain documents
- Unable to save or share scanned files
- Camera not working or not accessible in the app
- Unexpected language changes in the user interface
Requested features
5 requests- Add ability to import photos from device gallery
- Improve file organization with folder support
- Provide more export options (e.g. JPG, PNG)
- Implement cloud sync and cross-device access
- Add password protection or encryption for sensitive documents
In-app purchases
PDF Expert
- PDF Expert Premium Trial7 Days trial$9.991 Month
- PDF Expert Premium No Trial$9.991 Month
- PDF Expert for Education7 Days trial$39.991 Year
Show 6 moreShow fewer
- PDF Expert Premium7 Days trial3 variants$49.991 Year
- PDF Expert Premium New7 Days trial$49.991 Year
- PDF Expert Premium Existing7 Days trial$49.991 Year
- PDF Expert – Premium Editing1 Year trial$49.991 Year
- PDF Expert Mac & iOS Pro7 Days trial$79.991 Year
- PDF Expert Mac & iOS7 Days trial$79.991 Year
- PDF Expert Basic$9.99
Notebloc Scanner
- PRO - Monthly subscription$0.991 Month
- Pro - annual subscription$8.491 Year
- Notebloc Pro: Lifetime$24.99
Questions
Is PDF Expert free?
Is Notebloc Scanner free?
Which has better reviews, PDF Expert or Notebloc Scanner?
Do PDF Expert or Notebloc Scanner have ads?
Which is updated more often, PDF Expert or Notebloc Scanner?
Other comparisons















