Foxit Reader vs Nitro

Foxit Reader and Nitro are remarkably similar in their shared ability to create, view and edit PDFs, which is both thrilling and entirely unsurprising. They both allow for annotations, comments and the occasional doodle in a moment of creative inspiration, all while ensuring your documents are protected with passwords, because, as everyone knows, PDF documents are among the most fiercely guarded forms of information known to humankind. Cloud storage integration? Naturally, as if it were a given, like tea with biscuits. It’s almost as if these two programs were designed to help you manage your digital life while leaving you with just enough time to question the meaning of existence.

Foxit, a product that emerged in 2001 from a small corner of the United States, is light and nimble, like a well-packaged snack that doesn’t demand much of your computer’s attention. It’s aimed at individuals and small businesses who are simply looking to edit a PDF without getting involved in a labyrinth of unnecessary features. In fact, the free version is perfectly adequate for most, though if you’re a PDF power user who needs the full suite of advanced features, you’ll have to pay for the more robust PhantomPDF. It’s an odd little creature, but one that knows exactly what it’s doing.

Nitro, on the other hand, was conceived in Australia in 2005 and has since set its sights on the more serious business types, those who treat PDFs like precious gems requiring careful handling. With collaboration tools and OCR capabilities to make you wonder why you ever bothered with regular scanning, Nitro caters to enterprises that need more than just a simple viewer. It's more expensive than Foxit, of course, because you get what you pay for, but in the world of PDF management, Nitro is the one who thinks you’re ready to go all in.

See also: Top 10 PDF Readers