LibreOffice Draw vs PDF24 Creator
Both are alternatives to Adobe Acrobat Pro. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
LibreOffice Draw
The editor you may already have — real PDF text edits, free.
LibreOffice opens PDFs directly in Draw for genuine text and object editing, fully offline, on every desktop OS — and millions already have it installed. It's the right tool for the occasional fix, not a dedicated PDF workflow: multi-page text reflow and forms get clunky fast.
PDF24 Creator
The widest genuinely-free toolset — desktop and browser, no signup.
Geek Software's PDF24 is free for personal AND business use: a Windows desktop app that works fully offline plus browser tools for everything else — merge, compress, convert, OCR, sign. The trade: closed-source, Windows-centric on desktop, and the web version is ad-supported rather than paywalled.
Side by side
| LibreOffice Draw | PDF24 Creator | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 88 | 55 |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Self-hostable | No | No |
| Local-first | Yes | Yes |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Proprietary freeware |
| Pricing | Free, open-source | Free for personal and business use; ad-supported online tools |
LibreOffice Draw edges it on the Sovereignty Score, but the right pick depends on the trade-offs below.
LibreOffice Draw
Strengths
- +True text/object editing of PDFs, offline
- +Runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux
- +Already installed on millions of machines
Trade-offs
- −Clunky for multi-page text reflow
- −Not a dedicated PDF workflow — no OCR or forms tooling
PDF24 Creator
Strengths
- +Genuinely free, including business use
- +Desktop app works fully offline
- +Covers nearly every everyday PDF task
Trade-offs
- −Windows-only on desktop
- −Closed-source
- −Web tools are ad-supported
More Adobe Acrobat Pro head-to-heads
Facts verified 2026-07-19. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.