Adobe Acrobat Pro review: Still the gold standard

Best Prices Today: Adobe Acrobat Pro

Adobe created the PDF more than three decades ago and its PDF editor has continued to rule the category, despite what many users felt was its exorbitant price. But several years back, Acrobat adopted a cloud subscription model that now makes it more affordable for folks without an enterprise budget.

Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best PDF editors for comparison.

Adobe Acrobat Pro features

Acrobat Pro is less a single app than a document platform that works across desktop, web, and mobile. Along with its PDF editing and creation tools, it includes sharing, collaboration, and e-signature features, with access extending to Acrobat’s online tools, the Reader mobile app, and Adobe Scan.

Acrobat’s workspace sports an easily navigable tabbed interface. The Home view is where you land if you don’t have a PDF open. It gives you quick access to recent files; PDFs you’ve sent for review or signature; and files stored locally, in Adobe Document Cloud, or in third-party services like Box or Microsoft OneDrive.

The All Tools view organizes Acrobat Pro’s wealth of tools in a single pane, organized by function: “Create & Edit,” “Share & Review” “Forms & Signatures,” “Protect & Standardize,” and “Customize.” Any of the individual tools can be added as a shortcut to a sidebar so you can get to them with a PDF open without having to toggle back here. Selecting a tool opens the commands specific to it, or its associated toolbar if you are in an open document.

Each PDF file opens in its own tab in Document view, which displays an All Tools menu in the left panel, a Quick action toolbar, and a right side panel. Here you’ll find commonly used editing options, and features like thumbnails, bookmarks, comments, and more. This context-aware design adapts to your workflow, making it simple to perform even complex tasks efficiently.

Adobe continues to offer everything you need to work with PDFs in a business environment. You can create PDFs from a variety of file types (Microsoft Office files, images, HTML, scanned documents), send them out for comments and electronic signatures, and safeguard sensitive information with encryption, password protection, and text redaction.

The PDF editor’s document sharing experience remains one of it’s biggest strengths.

Acrobat’s most recent addition is Acrobat AI Assistant, an AI-powered feature designed to make document-heavy work less tedious. It can summarize PDFs, answer questions about their contents, extract key points, and generate content such as emails, presentations, and meeting notes from source documents. The tool is integrated into the core PDF-editing experience, helping users read, analyze, and repurpose documents more quickly.

Further reading: 5 ways Adobe Acrobat’s AI Assistant gives you a productivity edge

The PDF editor’s document sharing experience remains one of its biggest strengths. The interface gives you the option of sending a PDF as an email attachment or as a link to the file in Adobe Document Cloud. Filling and signing a document has also gotten easier, thanks to a new tool that asks you who needs to fill and sign first—you or others—and prompts you through completion of that task.

Really, if there’s anything about Acrobat Pro to knock, it’s that the sheer amount of features and how they work together can be dizzying for a first-time user. Thankfully, Adobe has added a new on-boarding experience that progressively guides you through the process of making Acrobat your default PDF editor, adding your PDF files, and introducing you to capabilities like combining PDFs and organizing pages. You can access recommended tools at any time from the Home tab and for a quick walk-through. And still there are additional features you’ll undoubtedly discover through use over time.

Adobe Acrobat Pro is available for Windows and macOS for $19.99 per month with an annual commitment, $29.99 month to month, or $239.88 if paid annually. Adobe offers a 7-day free trial. AI Assistant for Acrobat can be added for an additional $4.99 per month. Acrobat Standard remains the lower-tier option, while Acrobat Studio now sits above Pro as Adobe’s top plan.

Is Adobe Acrobat Pro worth it?

Though many of its comprehensive features are available in other less expensive PDF editors, Acrobat remains the industry standard and that alone is reason to consider it. Its subscription-based pricing guarantees you’ll always have the latest version of the software without the hassle of purchasing an entirely new install. That’s not insignificant as Adobe regularly updates and enhances its product. (A slightly less pricey option exists in Adobe Acrobat Standard, which has some of the core functionality of the Pro version but is less robust, as we point out in our comparison of the two products.) An Acrobat Pro subscription will also unlock a host of editing features on Adobe’s Acrobat Reader app for iOS and Android. The mobile interface closely mirrors the desktop version, though scaled-down a bit, and makes working with PDFs on the smaller screen surprisingly easy. 

Editor’s note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to change in order to accurately reflect the current state of the service. Any changes to text or our final review verdict will be noted at the top of this article.

Best Prices Today: Adobe Acrobat Pro