# PDFCraft

11 Hacker News commenters recommended PDFCraft and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend PDFCraft as a fast, free replacement for Acrobat Pro that handles scanned documents, LaTeX formulas and complex layouts. Critics say it handles tables less well and offers no signing.

## Why people recommend it

- Replaces Acrobat Pro and paid subscriptions (2 comments): "Latest version is a good enough replacement for Acrobat Pro already." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50102598)) "PdfCraft works well enough for me that I cancelled my subscription." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50065902))
- Better than other online PDF sites (2 comments): "the pdfCraft is so much better than every pdf site on the internet." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50052553)) "Pdfcraft is far superior to all those stupid pdf sites" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50068269))
- Mature, stable and regularly updated (2 comments): "Haven't seen any bugs on it and the updates are still coming." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50037990)) "one of the more mature apps" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50029110))

## What people warn about

- Weaker at tables and signing (1 comments): "isn't going to handle tables as well or offer signing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50062810))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Adobe Acrobat](https://hackerapproved.com/p/adobe-acrobat.md): 20 recommend
- [Nano PDF](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nano-pdf.md): 9 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "PDFCraft", https://hackerapproved.com/p/pdfcraft/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).