getPDF and Adobe Acrobat: what is free, what it costs, and where your file goes

We make getPDF, so read this knowing who wrote it. Every claim about Acrobat below was checked on Adobe’s own pages on 11 October 2026 and is listed under Sources; prices are Adobe’s US prices, and other countries see their own.

Side by side

	Acrobat online, free	Acrobat Standard and Pro	getPDF
Price	0	Standard US$14.99, Pro US$19.99 a month on an annual plan billed monthly; US$24.99 and US$29.99 month to month	0, donations optional
What free allows	Without an account, 1 use of most tools and 1 download; signed in, fill, sign, share and comment, plus 1 use of a premium tool every 30 days	Not limited	Every tool, no count
File size and pages	100 MB for most tools, 200 MB for PDF to Word and PDF to PPT, 2 GB for Compress; page tools up to 1,500 pages	Not stated	Your device’s memory
Where files are processed	Uploaded to Adobe cloud storage	Desktop app on your computer; online tools in Adobe’s cloud	In your browser; nothing is uploaded
How long files are kept	Deleted “within a short time period” unless you sign in to save; no time given	Kept in your Adobe account when you save there	Never received
Account needed	For most tools after 1 use, and to download from the editor	Yes, an Adobe account and a subscription	No
Watermark	Not stated	Not stated	None
Works offline	No	Desktop app, yes	Yes, after you use a tool once
Edit existing text	No, Adobe’s editor page says so	Yes, paragraphs reflow	Yes, line by line; lines do not reflow
OCR	Not in the list of online tools	Pro: “turn scans into editable PDFs”; not listed for Standard	Yes, 11 languages, with a confidence figure
E-sign	Fill and sign; requests for signature are limited	Send for e-signature and track responses	Draw, type or upload a signature; no sending, no certificate signatures
Batch	Compress: batch needs a paid plan; Merge takes up to 100 files	Yes	Yes, many files at once, downloaded as a zip
Mobile	Mobile browsers; Acrobat Reader apps for iOS and Android	Mobile apps included	Any mobile browser, no app
Platforms	Browser	Windows, Mac, web, iOS, Android	Any modern browser on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone

“Not stated” means Adobe’s pages that we checked do not say.

Where Adobe Acrobat is the better pick

Acrobat is a large program with decades of work in it, and some jobs only it does well.

• Paragraph editing. In Acrobat, a longer sentence wraps onto the next line and the paragraph reflows. In getPDF a line stays a line: longer text runs further right. For rewriting whole paragraphs, Acrobat (or the source file in Word) is the right tool.
• Sending for signature. Acrobat Standard and Pro send a document out, collect signatures and track who signed. getPDF signs the way you sign on paper and cannot send anything, because nothing is uploaded and there is no server to send from.
• Certificate signatures, comparing versions, accessibility tagging, web forms. Adobe lists redaction, comparing 2 versions of a PDF and creating web forms as Pro features. Certificate signing and tagging a file for screen readers are Acrobat jobs too. getPDF has none of these except redaction.
• Creating PDFs from Office files. Acrobat converts Word, Excel and PowerPoint to PDF and back. getPDF has no Word to PDF yet, and no PDF to PowerPoint.
• Layout-faithful PDF to Word. Adobe’s converter aims to reproduce the page. Ours rebuilds the content (headings, paragraphs, lists, tables) for editing and says so before you click.
• Your installed fonts and every script. Acrobat can edit in a font installed on your computer. A browser cannot hand those font files to a web page, so getPDF uses the file’s own fonts and 3 bundled families, and it refuses scripts its fonts cannot write, such as Arabic or Chinese.
• Cloud storage and teams. Adobe gives signed-in users online storage, sharing and team plans. getPDF has no accounts, no storage and no team features.

If your work is any of the above every week, the subscription is buying something real.

Where getPDF is the better pick

• Editing text without paying. Adobe’s editor page says the free version “does not let you edit existing body text”. getPDF’s editor changes the words already on the page, in the file’s own font when it has the letters, and the result stays selectable and searchable. Edit a PDF without Acrobat walks through it.
• No count, no sign-in. Adobe’s free tier is 1 use per tool without an account, then 1 premium use every 30 days signed in. getPDF has no counter. Merge, then delete a page, then compress, then sign: 4 jobs, no wall.
• No subscription to manage. Acrobat Pro’s free trial lasts 7 days and then converts to a paid plan automatically, at US$19.99 a month on an annual plan. Cancelling that plan more than 14 days in costs up to half the remaining commitment, in Adobe’s own words. There is nothing to cancel here.
• Confidential files. The file never leaves your device, so there is no deletion policy to trust. See the next section.
• Batch jobs on the free side. Adobe’s online Compress page says batch processing needs a paid plan. getPDF compresses, converts or protects many files at once and gives them back as a zip.
• Any computer. Nothing to install, so it works on a locked-down work laptop, a Linux machine or a borrowed computer, and the same tools work on a phone.

Where your files go

Acrobat online. Adobe’s help page says the online services “upload your files to Adobe cloud storage”. If you sign in, the file is saved to your Adobe account. If you do not, Adobe says it deletes the file “within a short time period”; no number of hours is given. Adobe’s privacy policy names the US and India as the main places it processes personal information. Acrobat desktop, the paid program, is installed on your computer and opens files from your disk.

getPDF. Nothing is uploaded. Every tool runs in your browser tab: the file is read from your disk, worked on in the tab, and the result is saved back to your disk. The site’s content security policy only lets the page connect to getPDF’s own address, and nothing there accepts files. The only message the site sends is an anonymous counter after a job: the tool, success or failure, and rough time and size buckets.

You do not have to take that on trust. Use a tool once so its engine is loaded, turn Wi-Fi off, and run it again on another file. It still works, because there is nothing to send. Prove a PDF tool is local shows the same check in the browser’s network panel, and the privacy page explains the architecture in plain words.

Moving from Adobe Acrobat to getPDF

The Acrobat online tools people use most, and where each job lives here:

In Acrobat	In getPDF
Edit PDF	Edit PDF
Compress PDF	Compress PDF
Convert PDF to Word	PDF to Word, content rather than layout
Convert PDF to Excel	PDF to Excel
Convert PDF to JPG	PDF to JPG or PDF to PNG
Convert JPG or PNG to PDF	JPG to PDF, PNG to PDF
Merge PDFs, Split PDF	Merge PDF, Split PDF
Reorder, rotate, delete, extract pages	Organise pages, Rotate PDF, Delete pages, Extract pages
Crop PDF, Number PDF pages	Crop PDF, Page numbers
Fill and Sign	Fill PDF form, Sign PDF
Protect PDF	Protect PDF, AES-256
Redact (Pro)	Redact PDF, which removes what is under each box on save
OCR (Pro)	OCR PDF

No equivalent yet: Word, Excel and PowerPoint to PDF; PDF to PowerPoint; Request e-signatures; Compare files; certificate signatures; creating form fields. For Word to PDF, Word itself does it with File, Export. For a password without Acrobat, 5 free ways are compared here.

Try the edit Acrobat charges for

Changing a date, a name or a sentence already in a PDF is the edit Adobe’s free online editor does not do. Drop a file here, double-click the line, type and save:

Edit PDFReal text editing, objects, annotations, forms. Free, runs on your device.Open

For the whole field, not only Adobe, read the best free PDF tools, compared, or see the other comparisons on the compare page.