14-criteria comparison across PDFelement, Skim, PDF Annotator, and Xodo. Data sourced from publicly available product documentation and official feature pages. This comparison covers generally available product editions. Enterprise plans, academic licences, and beta features are not included unless otherwise noted.
The fundamental split in this group is between PDFelement — a full document editing platform — and the other three, which are annotation and review tools. Treating them as equivalent would misrepresent the comparison. The table below reflects this distinction accurately rather than flattening it.
| Criteria | PDFelement | Skim | PDF Annotator | Xodo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text editing | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Image editing | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| OCR | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Annotation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Form creation | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Form filling | ✓ | Basic | ✗ | ✓ |
| Digital signatures | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Encryption | ✓ | Basic | ✗ | Basic |
| Redaction | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Batch processing | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Windows | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| macOS | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | Browser |
| Mobile | Limited | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Linux | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
// ✓ supported · ✗ not supported · yellow = partial or limited. Verify capabilities with each vendor for your specific version and licence tier.
PDFelement is the clear outlier in capability breadth — it supports nearly every criterion in the table. The other three tools are not feature-deficient by design; they serve narrower, more specific use cases where full document editing is not required. Skim on macOS, PDF Annotator on Windows tablets, and Xodo on mobile each deliver reliable experiences within their intended scope.
If your workflow requires editing document content, processing scanned files, or creating interactive forms, only PDFelement in this group meets those requirements. If your workflow is annotation, review markup, or signature-based document handling on mobile, the other options may serve you adequately at lower or no cost.