Sejda review: A free PDF editor that puts function over frills

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Sejda is a no-frills PDF editor available in free and paid versions. The free version is offered as an online tool and as a desktop editor. The primary difference between the two is that the online tool processes your PDFs in the cloud, while the desktop version does it on your hard drive. However, both versions limit you to three processing tasks per day, working with files no bigger than 50MB or 200 pages and images up to 5MB, combining no more than 30 files and 50 pages, and working with one file at a time.

The online and desktop tools are nearly identical, and both prioritize function over flair. The interface is essentially a list of categorized tasks. You choose a task first, then upload your document to process it. You can upload a PDF directly from Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, or your computer’s hard drive. There’s also an option to open a PDF from a web address if someone provides you with a direct link to the file. Though it’s intuitive to use, Sejda helpfully includes step-by-step instructions for how to perform the chosen task on that task’s page.

This review is part of our best PDF editors roundup. Go there to learn about our testing and how all the competitors performed.

The PDF editor has a simple text-based toolbar that highlights common editing tasks like adding images and annotating documents. You can add text and edit existing text but matching old and new text can be fraught as the online tool has limited font options—at least common fonts like Helvetica and Times New Roman are among them. You can bold and italicize text, change font size and color, and easily delete blocks of text.

In addition to editing text, you can add images and shapes to your document, create form fields, annotate and redact content, and create and add signatures. Once you’ve completed your tasks, click the “apply changes” button and download the modified document.

On top of editing, Sejda allows you to perform dozens of other operations. You can extract, split, merge, and combine pages; compress files; convert PDFs into other file formats; Bates stamp, encrypt, and watermark PDFs; and edit file metadata. OCR is also supported.

Both free Sejda tools are capable and easy to use, and they offer most of the same features you find in prettier, paid PDF editors. And even if you find the usage limits too restrictive, a paid subscription of $63 per year, which enables unlimited use of both the web and desktop tool, is still less than most other paid tools in our buying guide.