Quick answer
Yes — for the part of PDF Expert covered on this page, PDFsmith is a one-time-purchase alternative. It costs $29 once, while PDF Expert lists from $79.99/yr. Merge, split, rotate, watermark & convert PDFs offline. No uploads, ever. It is not a 1:1 replacement for everything PDF Expert does — the honest limits are spelled out below.
The verdict
Switch to PDFsmith if the slice of PDF Expert you actually pay for is the slice PDFsmith covers — and a $29 one-time price beats from $79.99/yr for as long as you use it.
Stay with PDF Expert if this sounds like you — PDF Expert is a full editor: annotate, highlight, edit embedded text and images, fill and sign forms, with best-in-class Apple integration. PDFsmith reassembles PDFs; it does not edit their contents.
Head to head
| PDFsmith | PDF Expert | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $29 once | from $79.99/yr |
| Where it runs | Your own machine | Vendor cloud (hosted service) |
| Renewal | None — the license never expires | Recurring — access ends when you stop paying |
| 5-year cost | $29 | ~$399.95 |
About PDF Expert: PDF Expert is Readdle's polished PDF editor for Mac, iPhone and iPad. It lists at about $79.99/yr, with a one-time Mac license around $139.99 also offered.
Where PDF Expert still wins
PDF Expert is a full editor: annotate, highlight, edit embedded text and images, fill and sign forms, with best-in-class Apple integration. PDFsmith reassembles PDFs; it does not edit their contents.
Where PDFsmith wins
If you use PDF Expert for assembling documents — merging scans, splitting packets, rotating pages, watermarking drafts — PDFsmith does those jobs for $29 once, cross-platform via its MIT source, with everything processed locally. That is roughly a third of one year of PDF Expert's subscription.
- Price, permanently. $29 once versus from $79.99/yr for as long as you use it. There is no renewal, no seat count and no tier gate.
- Merge PDFs. Drag-drop any number of PDFs, reorder them in the list, combine into one file.
- Split PDF. Extract any page ranges (1-2 | 3 | 4-6) into separate new PDFs.
The math
PDF Expert lists from $79.99/yr. PDFsmith is $29, paid once:
- After 1 year: PDFsmith has cost you $29 total — PDF Expert has cost ~$79.99.
- After 3 years: PDFsmith is still $29 — the subscription is at ~$239.97.
- After 5 years: PDFsmith is still $29 — the subscription is at ~$399.95.
Common questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes. The full source code is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/pdf-toolkit-mvp and always will be. Buying gets you the signed Windows installer, 1-click setup and updates — pure convenience, zero lock-in.
Do my PDFs get uploaded anywhere?
No. All processing runs locally with pdf-lib, a pure-JavaScript library. The app makes no network calls at all — you can run it with Wi-Fi off.
What platforms does it run on?
The packaged installer is for Windows. The MIT source runs anywhere Electron does (Windows, macOS, Linux) if you build it yourself with Node 18+.
Can it edit text inside a PDF?
No — and we'd rather tell you that upfront. PDFsmith covers merge, split, rotate, watermark, images-to-PDF and metadata. For rewriting body text inside an existing PDF you still need a full editor like Acrobat.
Try PDFsmith — $29, one time
Or get PDFsmith plus every other app in the suite: the OneTimeSuite bundle is currently $97, one time.