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Fyllyo or PDF Expert? An honest comparison.

Both are good Mac PDF apps. PDF Expert is the more polished editor, with iPhone and iPad apps and Word export. Fyllyo gives you more for free, opens the government XFA forms PDF Expert can’t, and costs $99 once.

Download free for MacFree and Paid

Free, with no account · Fyllyo Paid is $99 once · Apple silicon, macOS 13 or later

The short answer

Choose Fyllyo if

  • You want page tools, text recognition and passwords for free. PDF Expert’s free version is a viewer.
  • You fill government forms built with dynamic XFA, which PDF Expert for Mac doesn’t support.
  • You’d rather pay $99 once than $79.99 a year or $139.99 once.
  • You fill forms from clients’ documents and want AI that runs on your Mac.

Choose PDF Expert if

  • You need iPhone and iPad apps that sync with your Mac.
  • You convert PDFs to Word, Excel or PowerPoint.
  • You want an AI assistant to chat with your PDFs.
  • You edit text and images in PDFs a lot and want the more complete editor.

Side by side

What PDF Expert does comes from its own pages, checked October 2026. Sources are below the table.

FeatureFyllyoPDF Expert
PriceFree, or $99 onceFree viewer; Premium $79.99 a year or $139.99 once
Reorder, rotate, delete and combine pagesFreePremium
Make scans searchable (OCR)FreePremium
Password-protect a PDFFree
RedactionPaid, with a check for leftoversPremium
Edit textPaidPremium
Dynamic XFA formsPaidNot supported on Mac
Sign with a certificatePaidNot in PDF Expert’s signing help
Fill forms from documents with AI on your MacPaidNot on its pricing page
Export to Word, Excel or PowerPointPremium
iPhone and iPad apps

Sources: PDF Expert pricing · How to get PDF Expert (free vs Premium) · Supported forms and fields (XFA) · Sign PDF documents · PDF Expert features

Questions

Is PDF Expert free on Mac?

PDF Expert’s free version works as a PDF viewer. Text editing, page management and redaction need Premium, which is $79.99 a year or $139.99 once on Mac. Fyllyo’s free tools include page management, text recognition and password protection.

Can PDF Expert open XFA forms?

PDF Expert for Mac supports static XFA forms but not dynamic ones, the kind that show “Please wait…” in Preview. Fyllyo Paid opens most dynamic XFA forms so you can fill and save them; their own scripts, such as Validate, don’t run yet.

Which is cheaper?

Fyllyo’s free tools cost nothing, and Fyllyo Paid is $99 once with free updates. PDF Expert Premium is $79.99 a year, or $139.99 once for the Mac version.

Does Fyllyo have an iPhone or iPad app?

No. Fyllyo is a Mac app. If you need your PDFs on iPhone and iPad too, PDF Expert is the better choice.

See it for yourself

Each of these shows the real app doing the job.

Download free for Mac