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PDFelement vs ABBYY FineReader PDF Comparison (2026)

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PDFelement

ABBYY FineReader PDF

Overview

PDFelement is a cloud-based and on-premise PDF editor that assists users in creating, editing, protecting, and signing PDFs across desktop, mobile, and web platforms. The tool allows users to modify PDF content similar to a word processor, incorporating text, images, shapes, and the ability to import and edit layers. Users can also adjust the size, color, and font styles, insert links, and apply watermarks to their documents.

FineReader PDF empowers professionals to maximize efficiency in the digital workplace. Featuring ABBYY’s latest AI-based OCR technology, FineReader PDF makes it easier to digitize, retrieve, edit, protect, share, and collaborate on all kinds of documents in the same workflow.

Platforms supported

Web-based
iPhone app
Android app
Windows Phone app

Typical customers

Freelancers
Small businesses
Mid size businesses
Large enterprises

Customer support

Phone
Online
Knowledge base
Video tutorials

view more detailsview details

Platforms supported

Web-based
iPhone app
Android app
Windows Phone app

Typical customers

Freelancers
Small businesses
Mid size businesses
Large enterprises

Customer support

Phone
Online
Knowledge base
Video tutorials

view more detailsview details

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

Starting from

One-time payment

Free trial available
Credit cardless trial
Free account
Subscription based

Starting from

Per month

Free trial available
Credit cardless trial
Free account
Subscription based

User reviews

4.4

440

245

146

Value for money

Ease of use

Features

Customer support

77%

would recommend this app

4.7

451

340

Value for money

Ease of use

Features

Customer support

83%

would recommend this app

Pros

“Additionally, the free version applies a rather large watermark right in the middle of documents, which forces you to upgrade to the paid version for professional use.”

Patrick K.

Vice President at JPK and Associates, Inc.

“I enjoyed that this product gives you the ability to use toms of different editing features & even the ability to create your own graphics add-ins.”

Destiny C.

Sole proprietor

“You can modify the font, size, and style of text, resize or replace images, and add or edit hyperlinks.”

Naveen C.

Senior Technical Manager

Pros

“I also like the fact that it allows you to edit PDF documents as they are, without the need for creating endless Word files, implementing changes and then converting them into new PDFs.”

Chahine Y.

Translator

“The best program for scanning books and documents on sheets, generating and editing PDF files”

Mihail N.

Service Engineering

“Of course, the recognition rate is not as perfect as the Google lens, but when we process a lot of content, there is no such software, so we will continue to subscribe this year.”

Hyung R.

president

Cons

“However, some documents don’t work properly on it, and the OCR area doesn’t always cover the whole page.”

Fannie C.

Estimator

“Sometimes I lose all my work if I click the wrong button.”

Fannie C.

Estimator

“I feel their marketing deceptive, and I don't respect and trust the company.”

Cynthia S.

owner and psychologist

Cons

“Sometimes there are misreadings but this was often due to the quality of the file it was asked to scan.”

Matthew L.

Teacher

“Same thing for texts written in two, three, etc. columns: sometimes it merges two columns together and the resulting text makes no sense.”

Chahine Y.

Translator

“You have bad result if you want to recognize document in Greek (most part of diacritics are not well detected) and, with Hebrew, is literally a worst situation (you have not vowels and all diacritics). If you try to do by yourself, using custom OCR training, it's a very long journey and you don't even get a good result, and many times it's even not so clear if you are using your custom training set or not and even is really not clear why you cannot use one only feature to perform "verify" and "ocr training" in one only function/feature/action.”