How to convert a PDF to Word on your Mac
Convert a PDF to Word on a Mac without uploading it: copy from Preview, an Automator Quick Action plus Pages, or drag it with Shift held onto Koi's DOCX.
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What PDF Expert does, and what it costs now
PDF Expert by Readdle is a full PDF editor for Mac, iPhone and iPad. It edits the text and pictures in a PDF, annotates, fills in forms, signs, redacts, merges and reorders pages, reads scanned pages with text recognition based on Apple's Vision, and converts a PDF to Word, Excel, PowerPoint or JPG, per its site. Reduce File Size compresses a PDF at Lossless, High, Medium or Low quality.
On PDF Expert's pricing page, Premium is $79.99 a year for Mac, iPhone and iPad, or $139.99 once for the Mac alone. The one-time license doesn't include future major updates. Without paying, you can use it as a PDF viewer. It needs macOS 12 Monterey or later.
We make Koi, so read this with that in mind. Koi is not a full PDF Expert replacement: it doesn't edit a PDF's text, annotate, fill forms or sign. It compresses, reorders, splits, merges and converts PDFs, all on your Mac, which is the other half of what people pay PDF Expert for. Every fact about another app comes from its own site, its help pages or its Mac App Store listing, checked October 21, 2026. We didn't run tests or benchmarks.
Why switch
Why people look for a PDF Expert alternative
- Price. $79.99 a year is a lot if you open a PDF editor twice a month.
- The $139.99 one-time license is Mac only and leaves out future major updates.
- Most of what you do is merge, compress, reorder or sign, and the Mac already does much of that for free.
- You need Windows too. PDF Expert is for Mac, iPhone and iPad.
- You'd rather not have one more subscription for a job you do now and then.
Before paying for anything, check what you actually do with PDFs. If it's signing and filling forms, Preview already does it. If it's editing the words inside a contract, you need a real editor, and the picks below say which.
The picks
The best PDF Expert alternatives for Mac in 2026
1. Preview (built in)
Best for: Signing, filling forms, merging and reordering, for free
Preview comes with every Mac and covers more than people expect. It combines PDFs when you drag one file's thumbnails into another, adds, deletes and moves pages, rotates and crops, highlights and adds notes, and fills out and signs forms with a signature from your trackpad, camera or iPhone. File, Export with the Reduce File Size filter makes a PDF smaller, and Export can lock a PDF with a password.
It's free. Its weakness: it can't edit the words already in a PDF, and Apple's guide lists no way to turn a PDF into a Word file.
2. PDFgear
Best for: A free full editor, with most tools on your Mac
PDFgear calls itself a completely free PDF editor for Mac, with no sign-up. It edits text and pictures, annotates, converts to 30+ formats, compresses, reorders pages, signs, fills forms, redacts and reads scans with text recognition. It says most editing tools work on the Mac, and its AI summary, translation and questions need the internet. It runs on macOS 10.14 or later.
Weakness: its AI features and online services send your file over the internet, so know which tool you're using when the PDF is private.
3. UPDF
Best for: A cheaper paid editor, with a one-time option
UPDF edits, annotates, converts to Office and images, organizes pages, fills and signs forms, password-protects, compresses, compares and redacts, with batch processing. One license covers macOS, iOS and iPadOS. On its Mac App Store listing it's $49.99 a year or $79.99 once, with AI add-ons sold apart. It needs macOS 11 or later.
Weakness: the listing says text recognition is not available in the App Store version, so get it from UPDF's own site if you need it.
4. Adobe Acrobat
Best for: Offices that send PDFs back and forth with Acrobat users
Acrobat is the standard many offices work in. Acrobat Reader is free on Mac and lets you view, fill, sign and comment, but not edit text or pictures. On Adobe's pricing, Acrobat Standard is $14.99 a month and Pro $19.99 a month, both on a yearly plan billed monthly, and Acrobat Studio, with Adobe's AI Assistant, is $24.99.
Weakness: the cost, and the yearly commitment. Adobe says cancelling after 14 days can cost up to half of what's left of the year.
5. Nitro PDF Pro
Best for: Business editing on Mac and iOS, on Setapp too
Nitro PDF Pro converts to and from Office, reads scans, edits text and pictures, fills forms, compares files, redacts for good and password-protects. On its Mac App Store listing it's a free download with a 14-day trial and an annual subscription of $139.99. It's also on Setapp.
Weakness: it needs macOS 26 or later.
6. Koi
Best for: Compressing, merging, splitting and converting PDFs on your Mac
Koi covers the file jobs, not the editing. Start dragging a PDF and hold Shift, and a wheel of six opens round your pointer: Compress, Organize, Metadata, Split, Merge and Convert. Compress has Light, Balanced and Strong and shows the size before and after; its words, links and pages stay. Organize drags pages into a new order, turns, copies or removes them. Split makes a file per page or per range, like 1-3, 4, 5-. Merge puts several PDFs in order and saves one.
Convert saves a copy as Word, Pages, PowerPoint, Excel, JPG, PNG, text or Markdown. Be clear on what you get: Word, text and Markdown get the PDF's words, with bigger lines as headings, not its layout, columns or fonts. PowerPoint gets each page as a picture. A scan with no words in it is read by your Mac's text recognition only for text and Markdown, not for Word.
Everything runs on your Mac and nothing is uploaded. Koi needs a plan: Pro is $20 a month or $192 a year after a 3-day trial that needs a card, or Lifetime, paid once, from $59. Weakness: no text editing, no annotations, no forms, no signatures, and a PDF locked with a password doesn't open.
Do it free
Merge and sign PDFs in Preview
- Open the first PDF in Preview and choose View, Thumbnails.
- Drag the second PDF from Finder into the sidebar, where you want its pages to go.
- Drag thumbnails to reorder pages, or select one and press Delete to take it out.
- To sign, click the Markup button, then Sign, and pick or create a signature.
- Choose File, Export as PDF to save the result as a new file.
With Koi
Compress, merge or convert a PDF with Koi
- Start dragging the PDF in Finder or on your desktop. For Merge, drag all of them at once.
- While you hold it, press Shift. The PDF wheel opens round your pointer.
- Drop it on Compress, Organize, Split or Merge. The tool opens with your pages on the right.
- Or click Convert and pick DOCX, Pages, PPTX, XLSX, JPG, PNG, TXT or MD. The copy is saved beside the original and shows in Finder.
The original is never touched. More in our guides to compressing a PDF on a Mac and merging PDFs on a Mac.
Comparison
PDF Expert vs the alternatives
From each app's own site, help pages or Mac App Store listing.
| Edit text | Sign and forms | Merge and reorder | Compress | PDF to Word | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PDF Expert | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | $79.99 a year, or $139.99 once (Mac) |
| Koi | No | No | Yes | Yes | Words and headings, not layout | $20 a month, or Lifetime, $59 for the first 25 buyers, rising to $199 |
| Preview | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not listed | Free |
| PDFgear | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Free |
| UPDF | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | $49.99 a year, or $79.99 once |
| Adobe Acrobat | Standard and Pro | Yes, Reader too | Yes | Yes | Yes | $14.99 a month, yearly plan |
| Nitro PDF Pro | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not listed | Yes | $139.99 a year |
Head to head
PDF Expert vs Koi
If you change the words in contracts, fill forms and annotate papers every week, PDF Expert is the better tool, and Koi doesn't try to be one. Its editor, text recognition and iPad app are things Koi doesn't have.
Koi is better when the job is the file itself: a PDF too big to email, pages in the wrong order, a report to split, five scans to merge, a table to get into Excel. You do it from a drag, without opening an app, and a copy lands beside the original. And the same Koi turns Word files, slides and spreadsheets into PDFs, shrinks and edits photos and videos, types what you say with dictation, and keeps your documents on your Mac.
Stay on PDF Expert if
- You edit the text or pictures inside PDFs.
- You annotate, fill forms or sign often, on Mac and iPad.
- You need a scanned PDF turned into an editable Word file. Koi reads scans only into text or Markdown.
- You need a PDF to Word copy that keeps its layout. Koi keeps the words and headings, not the layout.
- You work with password-protected PDFs. Koi doesn't open them.
Choosing
Which PDF Expert alternative should you pick?
- Sign, fill, merge and reorder for free? Preview.
- A free editor that edits text too? PDFgear.
- A paid editor for less, paid once? UPDF.
- Working with Acrobat users all day? Adobe Acrobat.
- Compress, split, merge and convert from a drag, on your Mac? Koi, with Preview for signing.
Also see Smallpdf alternatives and iLovePDF alternatives if you'd rather not upload your PDFs, and Koi's plans.
Keep exploring
Smallpdf alternatives that don't upload your file
Smallpdf alternatives for Mac that don't upload your PDF: Koi, Preview, PDFgear, Sejda Desktop, Stirling PDF and PDF Squeezer. Compress, merge, convert offline.
iLovePDF alternatives that work offline on Mac
iLovePDF alternatives that work offline on Mac: Koi, Preview, PDFgear, Sejda Desktop, UPDF and Stirling PDF. Merge, split, compress and convert PDFs locally.
How to rearrange, rotate and delete PDF pages on your Mac
Reorder, rotate or delete pages in a PDF on a Mac: Preview's thumbnails change the file itself, or Koi's Organize does it on a copy. No upload either way.
Support
Frequently asked questions
On Readdle's pricing page, PDF Expert Premium is $79.99 a year for Mac, iPhone and iPad, or $139.99 once for the Mac alone, without future major updates. It's free as a PDF viewer.
Preview, built into every Mac, signs, fills forms, merges and reorders pages and makes PDFs smaller. If you need to edit the words in a PDF too, PDFgear is free.
No. Koi compresses, reorders, splits, merges and converts PDFs, and changes their metadata, but it doesn't edit text, annotate, fill forms or sign.
Yes. Drag the PDF with Shift held, click Convert, then DOCX. You get the PDF's words with bigger lines as headings, not its layout or fonts. It runs on your Mac.
No. Preview can annotate, sign, fill forms and move pages, but it can't change the words already in a PDF. For that you need an editor like PDF Expert, PDFgear or UPDF.