Over a period of time, the Adobe Reader seems to have been laden with a lot of features and has become too heavy. This is because the PDF format itself was developed by Adobe Systems and the Acrobat Reader was the first application used for this format.

And since Adobe granted royalty-free licenses for the patents needed to create PDFs back in 2008, most free alternatives will be just as effective and reliable.Īlso, remember that you can edit PDFs in Word 2013 too!ĭo you have a favorite Adobe alternative? Share it in the comments.Since the advent of the Portable Document Format ( PDF), the most famous application to view PDF files has been the Adobe Acrobat Reader. But if you don’t have the patience for Adobe Reader or the cash for Adobe Acrobat, there are plenty of quality free alternatives. In many ways, Adobe has become the standard application for reading and viewing PDFs. ConclusionĪlmost everyone uses Adobe Reader (there’s a reason the Adobe Reader page is one of the top Google searches for “click here”). But if that’s all you need, then it’s another better alternative to Adobe. SlimPDF is incredibly minimalist – all you can do with it is view and print PDFs and resize/enlarge them.

When system resources are tight, SlimPDF can help you view PDFs without bogging things down. Small footprint is the name of the game for SlimPDF, and it wins against most of its competitors. But you can also create them, either through the virtual printer or directly from Word.īack in April, Hammad wrote a report on Foxit Reader, highlighting it as a fast, lightweight alternative to Adobe Reader. Foxit Readerįoxit offers Foxit Reader, which is often touted as being faster than Adobe’s and Google Chrome’s built-in PDF viewer. PDF995 is just a creator – it doesn’t include a viewer. I almost always use PDF995 because it’s much less likely to get jumpy on me compared to its commercial counterparts. I have three different PDF creation programs on my work computer. What I like about it is the speed and reliability. There’s an ad you have to watch every time you make one, but it’s bearable. As Austin points out in his Nitro PDF Reader Review, Nitro comes in particularly handy for working with Microsoft Office 2010 documents.

Nitro Reader is a free reader and Creator, but unlike the others on this list, it’s packed with extra features. He wrote a nice tutorial on how to convert any document, image or website to a PDF, showing step-by-step installation and usage.ĬutePDF is just a creator – it doesn’t have a viewer. No bloatware, no registration, no nagging screens. What you get is a clean, simple document. To use it, all you have to do is print a document with CutePDF Writer, just like you would with a real printer. CutePDF is undoubtedly the most popular free document creator, and with good reason.

Alternatives to adobe and foxit reader