ABBYY FineReader vs. Adobe Acrobat

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
ABBYY FineReader
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
ABBYY FineReader is a PDF editor that allows users to convert, edit, share, and collaborate on PDFs. FineReader also converts scanned documents into searchable PDF files.
$16
per month per user
Adobe Acrobat
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Adobe Acrobat DC is the current version of the well-established document / PDF management solution, part of the Adobe Document Cloud (the other part being Adobe's eSign services based on technology acquired with EchoSign in 2011).
$29.99
per month per seat
Pricing
ABBYY FineReaderAdobe Acrobat
Editions & Modules
FineReader PDF Standard for Windows
$16
per month per user
FineReader PDF Corporate for Windows
$24
per month per user
FineReader PDF for Mac®
$69
per year per user
FineReader PDF Standard for Windows
$99
per year per user
FineReader PDF Corporate for Windows
$165
per year per user
Acrobat Pro for Individuals
$19.99
per month
Acrobat Pro for Teams
$23.99
per month per user
Acrobat Studio for Individuals
$24.99
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ABBYY FineReaderAdobe Acrobat
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ABBYY FineReaderAdobe Acrobat
Considered Both Products
ABBYY FineReader
Chose ABBYY FineReader
ABBYY FineReader is far more advanced and accurate for OCR-related tasks than Kofax Power PDF. When it comes to working with languages, other than English, ABBYY FineReader has a total advantage in all possible aspects. Editing tools in ABBYY FineReader work exceptionally well …
Chose ABBYY FineReader
Although both have functionalities that they share, in ABBYY FineReader they are better implemented, they have a better performance, in addition to being a more intuitive and simple user that makes their learning curve relatively simple, it is as if the options I need are …
Adobe Acrobat
Chose Adobe Acrobat
ABBYY FineReader promises better OCR recognition, but Finereader for Mac doesn't do 1/3 of the things that Adobe Acrobat DC does. It fails to meet my needs. Readdle PDF Expert is a fine product, but still, a lightweight compared to Acrobat DC. Using PDF Expert after using …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
I have used nitro and abbyy for OCR usage and found similar results. Google Drive I've used for OCR recognition as well. From a usage point of view, I have found Acrobat to have a much more intuitive interface to manage the features I need like editing, page insertion, …
Best Alternatives
ABBYY FineReaderAdobe Acrobat
Small Businesses
Tungsten Power PDF
Tungsten Power PDF
Score 9.8 out of 10
Tungsten Power PDF
Tungsten Power PDF
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
MSB Docs
MSB Docs
Score 9.4 out of 10
MSB Docs
MSB Docs
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Tungsten Capture
Tungsten Capture
Score 9.4 out of 10
Tungsten Capture
Tungsten Capture
Score 9.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
ABBYY FineReaderAdobe Acrobat
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(3 ratings)
8.9
(959 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(45 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(374 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
5.3
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(63 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.9
(15 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(4 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
4.5
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(8 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.1
(4 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
ABBYY FineReaderAdobe Acrobat
Likelihood to Recommend
ABBYY
FineReader is critical for any business that handles scanned documents or works with files that need conversion to Excel, PDF, Powerpoint or various other programs. It's ability to automatically process, read documents and suggest tables is impressive. It can take printed documents and convert all of the text to a editable format which is a huge time saver. In regards to tables it can automatically find and identify columns and separate them out for immediate use in Excel
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Adobe
It is highly reliable for heavy office workloads as it securely handles legal documents workflow and got some advanced form creation facility. It has got some cool features such as Pdf compression, can edit any form of text or images precisely and most importantly it has got an amazingly accurate OCR engine -Optical Character Recognition, which gives it an edge over any other document editing softwares. Ofcourse every thing has got its own pros and cons, similarly with Adobe Acrobat too, this software is not highly recommended for basic Pdf viewing or lightweight editing as the software eats up a large part of the processor to run which makes our work slower.
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Pros
ABBYY
  • OCR scanning
  • Refining scanned text
  • Sophisticated and flexible OCR settings/adjustments
  • High-quality editing and document comparison tools
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Adobe
  • It is easy to sign and send a document.
  • It makes it easy to scan and save a document.
  • It is easy to add text to any document.
  • You can create an editable PDF form for others to complete based on the questions you include.
  • You can create and send a secure document to a client for their signature.
  • It is easy to add photos to any document.
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Cons
ABBYY
  • A versioning system of the work done or the editions that have been saved in the files, or a tracking of changes between one version and another would be fabulous
  • An improvement that would be asked would be as previews or suggestions of the type of file that could be beneficial to use in an edition
  • The redesign of the panels is that of the analyzed document, the edition and the changes in my opinion need a resizing to have a better view of the work
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Adobe
  • I wish the backward compatibility was a little more friendly. PDFLyer had to be updated sooner that we would like when we updated from Adobe 2017 to Adobe 2026.
  • I wish it had list processing like Excel where it could remove duplicates, change formatting, etc.
  • Sometimes after an update we lose our plugins and have to restablish the connection to the plugin or reinstall.
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Likelihood to Renew
ABBYY
No answers on this topic
Adobe
Adobe Acrobat works seamlessly with the other Adobe products we use that are industry-standard. We will certainly continue to use Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator, meaning it will always be convenient to work seamlessly with Adobe Acrobat for our organization. We are happy with the performance of Acrobat and it's meets our expectations.
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Usability
ABBYY
No answers on this topic
Adobe
I would say overall, the product is great and as someone who has used it for many years now, I'm quite familiar with the ins and outs of the application. However, we found that when users were shown it for the first time and a bit after, they would feel a bit overwhelmed by the options and what everything meant. I think the UI could be simplified or an option to have a simplified mode and an advanced mode added.
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Reliability and Availability
ABBYY
No answers on this topic
Adobe
We have not had availability issues with Adobe Acrobat, or at least none that I am personally aware of. Some may encounter crashes of the software during outages of electricity in their city or neighborhood, which no one can plan for, but with generators in our organization, we have been lucky not to have outages
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Performance
ABBYY
No answers on this topic
Adobe
One of the best features of Adobe Acrobat is its speed and stability. When dealing with massive multi-page files, having to reload a crashed program over and over again would slow down progress unnecessarily. And expanding on that, having the table of contents generated allows me to skip to different pages with ease, a necessary feature with exceptionally long files. word searches are even more helpful with text recognition.
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Support Rating
ABBYY
No answers on this topic
Adobe
For a while, Acrobat DC crashed pretty frequently. I contacted Adobe Acrobat support about the problem. At first support was unable to provide a solution. After about a month Adobe's software engineers provided a fix. I just wish it had taken less than a month to solve the problem.
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Online Training
ABBYY
No answers on this topic
Adobe
Answered basic questions.
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Implementation Rating
ABBYY
No answers on this topic
Adobe
I was not involved with the implementation process, so I cannot answer this question. However, when it was installed on my computer system, they did so virtually. I just sat there while they took control of my computer over the network and watch them install it, lickety split
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Alternatives Considered
ABBYY
While Adobe Reader can identify documents and convert them to some other various formats, it cannot process the documents to identify tables for use in Excel. We only had success by letting Adobe read a file for any identifiable text but it wasn't always accurate. FineReaders ability to handle hundreds of pages at once felt leaps and bounds above Adobe
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Adobe
Adobe Acrobat has the most premium features that other software can't offer. The seamless UI is consistent on any device, and the ease of use. The security and the advanced AI features are what you won't get on any other platforms or apps.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
ABBYY
No answers on this topic
Adobe
I am not responsible for sales or purchasing
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Scalability
ABBYY
No answers on this topic
Adobe
I find that many users aren't aware of many features of the software they use, nor may they be comfortable with learning multiple-step processes. For the simplest of PDF purposes (scanning, downloading, exporting), it gets a thumbs-up. For anything involving electronic signatures, meh--causes eyes to glaze over, or forgetting what all is involved.
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Return on Investment
ABBYY
  • ABBYY FineReader is an irreplaceable tool for preparing documents for document management systems and getting the most of them afterward
  • Great time saver in various scenarios related to work with scans and photos of documents
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Adobe
  • Definitely a positive ROI when I can receive clear notes/direction on edits for a PDF via Acrobat's comment system, rather than chicken scratch on a printed document.
  • The ability to password-protect my PDFs so I can make sure only the workforce I want to see the information has been priceless!
  • As I mentioned before, a huge positive impact is the ability to edit PDFs without having to return to the original file's native software.
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ScreenShots

ABBYY FineReader Screenshots

Screenshot of a display of the options: view, edit, and convert PDFs or compare different versions.Screenshot of PDF editing in FineReader, which is almost like a Word document, where users can rewrite text paragraphs, edit the content in tables, or rearrange the layout.Screenshot of the software's collaboration features, with the ablity to comment on, annotate, or mark up documents.Screenshot of PDF to Word document conversion.Screenshot of fillable fields, in a PDFScreenshot of PDF organization options, which include the ability to merge and rearrange pages, or adding Bates numbering and stamps.

Adobe Acrobat Screenshots

Screenshot of where to create, edit, convert, and share PDF files all from within Microsoft Teams – as part of Acrobat integrations with Microsoft 365 apps.Screenshot of Liquid Mode in Adobe Acrobat Reader mobile app, where users can read PDFs on phones and tablets without having to pinch and zoom. Navigate lengthy documents with intelligent outline and search tools, while maximizing readability and comfort with font size and line spacing that are adjustable.Screenshot of where to fill and sign PDF forms from anywhere and on any device. Here, users can collect signatures, digitally track progress, and automatically archive the signed document.Screenshot of the Adobe Scan mobile app, used to capture and convert documents into high-quality, interactive PDF documents that can be filled out, signed, and shared. This eliminates the hassle of finding a printer, filling a form by hand, and scanning it again.