Best PDF reader for Windows of 2021

Though it’s nearly 25 years old, the PDF may be more useful than ever in our increasingly multi-device, cross-platform world. Much of the time you can get by with a free PDF reader to review and comment on these files. But inevitably, particularly in a business setting, you’ll need to edit a PDF file and that usually requires upgrading to a premium PDF editor.

Therefore while it's great to have a basic PDF reader, it can be even more useful to have PDF software that allows additional features to be used, so you can get the most out of the PDF files you do use.

Here we'll feature the best PDF readers currently available for Windows.

Best PDF reader for Windows of 2021

1. Foxit PDF Reader

View, edit or create PDF files with this rich-featured application, which also offers support for drawing tools, signatures, full screen mode and more

The PDF format has a few important advantages, such as the graphic integrity, the support for all the major platforms, the security-related features and the high compression rates. These and other reasons justify its popularity, especially in the corporate environment.

While there are cost-free PDF viewers and even Windows comes with support for opening such documents, there are third-party applications out there that offer so much more than a simple PDF viewer. Foxit PDF Reader is one of them.

Designed to offer an all-in-one package for accessing PDF files, Foxit PDF Reader serves its purpose pretty well. Its toolbox is pretty generous, containing options for opening and reading the content of PDF documents in a comfortable manner. Additionally, a few interesting tools are right there, at your disposal.

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2. PDF Candy

Our new pick for the best free PDF editor is PDF Candy, because it offers something many free options do not — an OCR feature for scanning text. You can't edit OCR'd text in this web-based PDF editor, but you are able to upload PDF files and extract text and create a text document, RTF file, or Word document in both .doc and .docx formats.

You can choose from 44 tools to create or convert PDF files. It's also easy to rearrange pages within a document, add watermarks, protect PDF files with passcodes, edit metadata within a PDF file, split or add pages to documents, and extract images. Actual text editing is pretty limited, the trade-off you make to enjoy a fairly feature-rich free PDF editor.

Once you've made your edits in PDF Candy, you can download the edited document or upload a new document to work on. PDF Candy keeps all of your documents in a queue so you can download them all at once after you've finished making changes to them.

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3. Wondershare PDFelement

Create, modify, convert, and apply watermarks to your documents with a secure and intuitive PDF-centered program that will fit all your needs.

Wondershare PDFelement is a PDF viewer, editor, and batch document converter that enables access to an extensive suite of PDF tools, fit for users who need a complete solution.

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4. Foxit PDF Editor

Foxit PDF Editor (formerly Foxit PhantomPDF) is a feature-rich PDF Editor program to quickly and easily work on PDF documents. Better collaboration generates better documents and easily modify & edit PDF files. Document management and tracking, Scan, OCR, and compress files

Business-ready PDF toolkit that features editing tools, document protection capabilities, such as password encryption and file signing

There are numerous PDF editors you can rely on, and Foxit PDF Editor is especially created for the more tech-savvy users, due to the plethora of features it packs.

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5. Smallpdf

Smallpdf for Desktop is a small but feature-full office tool application that can help you to easily reduce the size of your PDF files without compromising the quality of the content inside of them (such as images) or convert them to one of the numerous file types, such as Office files, images and more.  In addition to having advanced compression and conversion capabilities, Smallpdf for Desktop can also be used as a streamlined and fast PDF reader that offers an optimal reading experience.

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6. PDF24 Creator

Create PDFs from any printable document, merge and split files, extract pages, create and manage certificates, swap pages across different files, set document security and metadata, and more

PDF24 Creator enables you to create PDF files from any printable document, extract pages from PDFs, and create self-signed certificates. It has advanced settings that can be quickly figured out.

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7. Sumatra PDF

A user-friendly program that helps you open PDF, CHM, DjVu and XPS formats, as well as comic books, while offering support for different viewing modes and keyboard shortcuts

SumatraPDF is a useful tool that makes it as simple as possible for you to view documents in the PDF, CHM, DjVu and XPS formats, as well as comic books.

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8. PDFCreator

A super-efficient application that helps manage PDF documents without effort, even directly from the context menu, as well as get access to a virtual printer and manage PDFs faster, in other connected tools, like email clients, document processors, etc.

PDFCreator is a super-powerful PDF software solution that allows you to create and edit PDF documents and other files, as well as implement C# scripts for managing advanced printing implementations, and so much more.

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9. doPDF

Converts any printable document to PDF format while allowing you to select the page size, unit type, orientation, resolution, and scale

doPDF is a software tool that can convert any printable document to a PDF file, whether it's a text file, image or other. It doesn't have any advanced features, so it has been designed for a simple conversion process.

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