KillerPDF

KillerPDF is a Windows PDF editor that does the things most people open Adobe Acrobat for: edit text inline, add signatures, merge and split pages, fill forms, annotate, and flatten for printing. No account, no telemetry, no internet required. GPLv3 and maintained by a solo developer, with rendering handled by PDFium so pages look right.

It installs as a small self-installing EXE (around 6 MB) that registers file associations, so PDFs open straight into it. Form filling covers text inputs, checkboxes, and radio buttons. There are multiple view modes, full-text search with highlighting, outline navigation, and password-protected PDF support. For day-to-day editing on a Windows machine, it covers the common cases without a subscription.

Solo users on Windows get a free replacement for the $15/month Adobe Acrobat subscription or a one-time Nitro license. Small teams save per-seat fees. Large teams with real document workflows still want something with audit trails and integrations.

The catch: Windows only, no Mac or Linux builds. The UI is functional rather than polished, and for anything beyond everyday editing (advanced redaction, OCR, accessibility compliance) you still want a paid tool.