Top 5 Open Source PDF Editors

LibreOffice is a strong competitor in the world of PDF editing. It is much like MS Office in terms of power. It is also free and open source software. It's a good option for people who can't or won't use the proprietary software. It has built in all features of an efficient PDF editor open source. Of course, it is not perfect. LibreOffice is a leading alternative to Microsoft Office, just in an inconsistent interface.

Pros:

• Allows easy editing of PDF files
• Can Add or delete pages
• Also allows for editing text and images
• Allows file conversion support
• Provides facilities of export and import
• Digital signing feature available

Cons:

• Clunky interface
• Confusing menu options
• No cloud options
• Sometimes messes up with original and backup files
• Cannot email directly to windows live mail
• Difficulty in compatibility and file types

Inkscape is much like its competitors, just more preferred because of the strong performance and a wide range of features that it makes available for the users. To edit PDF files, Vector Graphics are used. It is a totally free alternative for using and downloading. It performs all the basic tasks of a full PDF reader and open source PDF editor with full functions such as removing or adding text or images. The best thing is that you can find its portable version without having to install it.

Pros:

• Allows exporting to the PNG format
• User interface is friendly
• Entirely free to use
• Is not a heavy software and doesn't take much space for installing
• Easy editing of document heavy of graphics

Cons:

• It looks familiar with other options available
• It lags or stops in most PCs
• It is kind of Slow and unintuitive
• Does not have enough tools

PDFedit is a great and widely used tool. It has all the benefits of free and open source PDF editor software. It can be used as a PDF reader and also includes functions of a PDF editor. The user can detect exactly which sections, words or phrases they want. It can also be used to add texts and images into the PDF file. It also allows the functionality to delete information from the file.

Pros:

• Does not take up too much space for installation
• Multi-platform support
• Its tools allow personalization
• Conversion of files is possible
• Many more advanced options are available
• Provisions for protecting file with passwords is available

Cons:

• Usage of the tools brings several difficulties
• Still in beta
• Some features simply do not work
• Some other features show error messages

Apache OpenOffice Draw is popular because of the great jobs it gets done. It can be easily used not just as a PDF reader but also a PDF editor open source. A bunch of features can be found in this software such as customizing PDF pages, saving them in different available file formats, removing or inserting any text etc. It also supports import and export features.

Pros:

• A great variety of features
• Multiple platform compatibility
• Allows easy creation of basic charts
• Provides feature for spell check

Cons:

• User interface looks out of date
• Excel users face problems due to the functions
• Takes time in starting up
• Many being identified in some versions of windows
• Gets slow and cranky while processing large documents

PDFSam basic is a PDF file editor that supports merging, splitting and editing of PDF files. It is also open source PDF editor. It is worth trying if you seek to recompose or reorder numerable pages of the PDF file. It is a java application and it can run on any device having Java runtime.

Pros:

• Supports visual organizing
• Allows re-ordering of PDF pages
• User can mix and merge pages
• Provision for extracting or splitting pages available
• Rotating and saving one or multiple pages is available

Cons:

• Visual document composer shows errors
• Requires Java
• A bit difficult to understand how it works at first