Software Alternatives & Startups

PDFMonkey VS PDFsam

Compare PDFMonkey VS PDFsam and see what are their differences

PDFMonkey

Automate your PDF generation.

Rating
0 reviews
Pricing
Open source Freemium Free trial €15 / Monthly (3000 documents, 7 days retention, Load images, fonts, CSS & JS)
PDFsam

PDFsam Basic, a free, open source, multi-platform software designed to split, merge, extract pages, mix and rotate PDF files

Rating
0 reviews
Pricing
Open source Free

Which is more popular?

Based on our record, PDFsam seems to be a lot more popular than PDFMonkey. While we know about 32 links to PDFsam, we've tracked only 1 mention of PDFMonkey.

social mentions
1 vs 32
PDF Tools popularity
21% vs 79%
alternatives listed
112 vs 240+

Base details

Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.

PDFMonkey
PDFsam
Website pdfmonkey.io pdfsam.org
Pricing
Open source Freemium Free trial €15 / Monthly (3000 documents, 7 days retention, Load images, fonts, CSS & JS) Official pricing
Open source Free Official pricing
Platforms
Make Bubble Automation Zapier +1
Windows Linux Mac OSX
Company Startup from France · 1 - 9 employees · 2019 —
Listed in

About PDFMonkey and PDFsam

In their own words, as submitted to SaaSHub.

PDFMonkey
PDFsam

PDFMonkey is your automation tool perfect for generating a high volume of PDFs. HTML to PDF with our restless API or with various automation tool such as Zapier, Make or Bubble. Link it with thousands of tools to automate your workflow and simplify your PDF management.

Read more about PDFMonkey

No description of PDFsam yet.

Features and specs

What each product offers, as listed by its team.

PDFMonkey 4 features
PDFsam 5 features
  • Snippets
    Share code between different templates
  • Direct generation
    Generate a PDF when updated informations
  • XML embedding
    Insert XML inside the PDF and generate a PDF 3-A compatible factur-X
  • PDF generation
    PDF generation that you can connect with thousands of tools
  • Cost
    PDFsam Basic is free and open-source, which makes it highly accessible for individual users and small businesses.
  • User Interface
    The interface is simple and straightforward, allowing users to easily navigate and use the essential features without a steep learning curve.
  • Functionality
    PDFsam includes essential features such as merging, splitting, rotating, and extracting PDF pages, which can cover most common PDF editing needs.
  • Cross-Platform
    PDFsam is available on multiple operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, ensuring broad compatibility and usability.
  • Community Support
    Being an open-source project, PDFsam has a community of users and developers who contribute to its improvement and troubleshooting.

Possible disadvantages

  • Advanced Features
    The free version lacks advanced features like OCR, which are available in the paid versions such as PDFsam Enhanced.
  • Performance
    Some users report that the application can be slow when processing large documents or performing complex tasks.
  • Interface Design
    While functional, the user interface is not as modern or visually appealing compared to some other PDF software.
  • Commercial Use
    For businesses, the licenses for the advanced features in PDFsam Enhanced can be costly, especially for small enterprises.
  • Customer Support
    While there is a user community for support, professional customer support is limited to the paid versions, which might be a hurdle for those needing quick assistance.

Analysis

An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.

PDFMonkey
PDFsam

No analysis of PDFMonkey yet.

Overall verdict

  • PDFsam is considered a good tool, especially for users who need a straightforward and cost-effective solution for managing PDFs. Its open-source background ensures transparency and community support, while its user-friendly interface appeals to those without advanced technical skills.

Why this product is good

  • PDFsam (PDF Split and Merge) is a popular tool for handling PDF documents due to its simplicity, open-source nature, and ability to perform a range of common PDF tasks like splitting, merging, rotating, and extracting pages. It offers both a free basic version and a more advanced version with additional features, making it accessible and flexible for different user needs.

Recommended for

    PDFsam is recommended for individuals and small businesses looking for an easy-to-use, cost-efficient PDF tool capable of handling everyday PDF manipulation tasks without the complexity or expense of more advanced software. It’s particularly suitable for users who require basic features and occasional PDF editing.

Videos

Walkthroughs and reviews on video.

PDFMonkey 1 video + Add
PDFsam 2 videos + Add

PDFMonkey - explained

How to Use PDFsam

More videos

  • - PDFSamVisual Demo

Category popularity

How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.

Score bands 0–20 21–40 41–50 51–60 61–100
PDFMonkey
PDFsam
21% 21%
79% 79%
100% 100%
0% 0%
0% 0%
100% 100%
100% 100%
0% 0%

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing PDFMonkey and PDFsam.

What makes your product unique?

PDFMonkey's answer

PDFMonkey is a simple PDF generation tool that can make your task easier with automated shipping labels, invoices or any other PDF hassle.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

PDFMonkey's answer

PDFMonkey is one of the oldest in the market but also one of the best tool giving advanced features and improved support on automation tools such as Zapier, Make and bubble.

User comments

Share your experience with using PDFMonkey and PDFsam. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

Log in or Post with

Reviews and articles

External articles and on-site reviews we used to compare the two products.

PDFMonkey no reviews yet
PDFsam no reviews yet
  • 14 Best PDF APIs for Every Business Need
    geekflare.com · Nov 2023

    PDFMonkey helps you with automating the process of PDF generation. Using it, you can effortlessly manage your templates and insert dynamic data in them whenever necessary. Thus, it saves precious time for the...

  • 15 PDF editors quick review
    thinkmobiles.com · May 2020

    This is a simple open source Java pdf editor. The basic version allows you to edit the content and structure of pdf documents. Builds of this version are available for Windows, MacOS and Linux. PDFsam Enhanced version...

Social recommendations and mentions

Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.

PDFMonkey 1 mention
PDFsam 32 mentions
  • From PDFMonkey to Aim Monkey: Building internal tools that actually help
    One of the first features I worked on when starting my career was AIM's pdf generation tool. It was time to migrate off of PDF monkey's SaaS product to our own solution. We had to figure a way of maintaining the same templates we used... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • JavaFX In Action with Pedro Duque Vieira, aka Duke, about Hero, PDFSam, FXThemes, FXComponents,...
    He shares insights into a few applications, like Hero (CAD application to calculate energy efficiency) and PDFSam (powerful and professional PDF editor). PDFSam had 100.000 downloads in April '24! - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Pdftool.org: modify pdfs offline in the browser
    I find pdfsam to be the perfect offline tool for me on Windows. https://pdfsam.org And it's open source as well: https://github.com/torakiki/pdfsam. - Source: Hacker News / about 3 years ago
  • Free pdf editor?
    That might be fit for your purpose PDFSam. Source: over 3 years ago

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Alternatives to PDFMonkey and PDFsam

When comparing PDFMonkey and PDFsam, you can also consider the following products.