Adobe built the PDF format, but they don't have a monopoly on editing it. Annotations, signing, form filling, page management, and even body text editing are all possible without any Adobe product โ the tools you need depend on what kind of editing you're doing.
Annotations and Signing: No Adobe Required
For the most common editing tasks โ highlighting, adding comments, signing, filling in forms โ you have good options on every platform without touching Adobe software. Preview on Mac handles all of these natively. Microsoft Edge on Windows has built-in annotation tools. Browser-based tools like WukongPDF's PDF Editor cover the same ground on any device.
PDF-XChange Editor on Windows is worth mentioning here โ its free tier is more capable than most people realize, covering annotations, form filling, basic text editing, and page organization without a watermark for those specific functions. It's the closest non-Adobe equivalent to Acrobat Reader with some Pro features mixed in.
Editing Body Text Without Adobe
Modifying existing text in a PDF is the harder problem, and the honest answer is that non-Adobe options are imperfect here. LibreOffice Draw can open PDFs and edit individual text blocks โ it works for simple documents where you need to change a specific word or number, but struggles with complex layouts. Text doesn't reflow when you add content, and fonts often substitute if the originals aren't installed on your system.
The more reliable approach for body text edits is to convert the PDF to Word, make the changes, and export back to PDF. Convert using a browser-based PDF-to-Word tool or by opening the PDF in Google Docs, edit in Word or Docs, then re-export. This doesn't require Adobe at any step and gives you full text editing capability, at the cost of some formatting fidelity.
Page Management: Straightforward Without Adobe
Adding pages, removing pages, reordering, splitting, and merging PDFs all work well without Adobe. Preview on Mac handles these through its thumbnail panel. Browser tools handle them on any platform. PDFsam Basic is a dedicated free desktop application for split and merge operations that works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. None of these tasks require Acrobat.
What Adobe Acrobat Pro Still Does Better
For high-stakes or complex editing โ modifying body text while preserving exact layout, working with layered PDFs, advanced redaction, Bates numbering for legal documents, or preflight checking for print production โ Acrobat Pro is still the most capable tool. The non-Adobe alternatives cover the common cases well; the edge cases where you really need Acrobat are narrower than most people assume, but they exist.