PdfCraft

PdfCraft is a free, open source PDF app from the ArtCraft team, built to do what Adobe Acrobat does. You can read, search, organise, combine, split, comment on, fill in and protect PDFs. It renders documents faithfully, including complex scripts and Japanese vertical text, and runs on Mac, Windows (including ARM), Linux, FreeBSD and in a web browser.

What it can do

• Faithful rendering. Kerning, right-to-left and complex scripts, vertical Japanese, colour emoji, transparency and blend modes all look the way the author intended, and pages stay sharp at any zoom.
• Find anything. Search as you type and copy text in the right reading order, even in columns or right-to-left text.
• Organise pages like cards. See every page at once, then drag to reorder, rotate, delete or insert.
• Combine and split. Merge any number of PDFs into one with bookmarks for each, or extract and split pages into new files.
• Protected documents. Opens password-protected PDFs using the standard PDF security methods and respects their permissions.
• Comments, forms and layers. Threaded comments, form fields with their values and signatures, layers you can switch on and off, and attachments.
• Safe saving. Changes are added on top of the original file rather than rewriting it, with deep undo.
• Works with AI assistants. Open, read, search and reorganise PDFs from the command line or through MCP.

Part of the Crafting Apps

PdfCraft is one of the Crafting Apps, a family of free, open source creative and office apps from ArtCraft, each a clean-room rebuild of a well-known paid app written from scratch in Rust. The best known is PhotoCraft, a Photoshop-style photo editor. They share the same approach: familiar menus and shortcuts, fast native apps on every major system, a version that runs in your browser, and commands an AI assistant can drive.

PdfCraft, Stirling-PDF, Acrobat Reader or Acrobat Pro?

All four can open and work with PDFs. The difference is how much they do, how private they are, and what they cost.

PdfCraftThis page

Best forA free, private, Acrobat-style PDF workbench

Reads, organises, combines, comments on and fills PDFs in a fast native app, fully offline. New and still growing.

How mature

Alpha (2026)

Open source

Yes (MIT or Apache 2.0)

Cost

Free

Stirling-PDF

Best forSelf-hosted PDF tools for a team

A popular web app you run on your own server, with dozens of tools for merging, converting and OCR. Not a desktop reader.

How mature

Mature

Open source

Yes (MIT)

Cost

Free; paid extras

Acrobat Reader

Best forSimply reading and signing PDFs

Adobe's free reader. Reliable and everywhere, but closed source, and editing or organising pages needs a paid plan.

How mature

Industry standard

Open source

No

Cost

Free

Acrobat Pro

Best forFull PDF editing at work

Adobe's complete PDF suite, with editing, conversion and e-signatures. Powerful, but closed source and paid monthly.

How mature

Industry standard

Open source

No

Cost

Monthly subscription

A quick way to choose: just reading? Acrobat Reader is fine. Need PDF tools for a whole team on your own server? Try Stirling-PDF. Need full editing at work? Acrobat Pro. Want a free, private desktop app to organise, combine and fill PDFs? Try PdfCraft.

How to get it

• Easiest: download it from the PdfCraft page on getartcraft.com, or from the latest release on GitHub.
• Every system: installers for Mac (Apple silicon and Intel), Windows (including ARM), Linux (AppImage, Flatpak, .deb, .rpm) and FreeBSD.
• In a browser: a web version runs the whole app in a modern browser, and you can host it yourself.
• For scripts and AI assistants: the pdfcraft-cli tool runs the same commands without opening the app and includes an MCP server.

Good to know

• Alpha. PdfCraft is in alpha. Its team estimates it's about 55% of the way to replacing Acrobat for everyday work, and about 66% for someone who only needs the essentials. These are the team's own estimates; nobody has tested them independently yet.
• Changing very fast. New versions arrive every few days, so expect bugs and update often.
• Built with AI help. The ArtCraft team uses AI coding agents heavily, which is how so much appeared so quickly. Test it on your own files before you rely on it.
• No Adobe code. It's a clean-room rebuild, written from public file specifications and by observing how Acrobat behaves, not from Adobe's code.
• Licence: MIT or Apache 2.0, your choice. Free to use, including at work. The ArtCraft and PdfCraft names and logos have their own, stricter terms.