The largest online PDF tool, —, draws — visits a month: — of the traffic of all — mainstream sites with a figure. None of the — shady subscription-trap sites has a public traffic estimate; what they leave behind is complaints and leaks. The money is in subscriptions: the only disclosed revenues are airSlate's $200M (pdfFiller $106M), Avanquest's ≈$127M (Soda PDF), and two listed Chinese vendors, Foxit (≈$148M) and Wondershare (≈$213M, whole group). All amounts are in US dollars.
Every site with a published estimate, on a log scale: the bars span 2,300 to 325 million visits. Red bars are malware lures that copied a real brand. Periods differ by site (hover a bar); the shady tier is missing because no tracker publishes figures for it.
Monthly visits in the four Semrush snapshots the research captured, April 2025 to September 2026.
Global monthly searches per term where the research found one. Lighter bars are indicative aggregates whose original page wasn't identified.
What each site does, from reviews, regulators and security reports. A visit figure exists only for the two fake PDF Candy sites.
| Site | Tier | Monthly visits | What happens |
|---|
The free tier is the funnel: tight caps push people to a subscription. The shady tier inverts it with a tiny "single document" price that turns into a monthly charge.
| Product | Free tier | Paid |
|---|
Almost nobody in this market publishes revenue. The four hard figures come from a founder interview (airSlate), an equity-research note (Avanquest) and two listed groups' filings (Foxit, Wondershare). Everything else below is labelled as unverified, a target, or not disclosed.
US dollars a year, from the founder's July 2026 interview. pdfFiller, a form-filling site, earns more than half of the group's $200M.
Revenue in millions of US dollars, FY2023–FY2025, converted from yuan at annual average rates. Wondershare is the whole group; its PDF share is not disclosed. Foxit grew 75% in two years (in yuan).
How each site charges. Subscriptions dominate; ads fund the free tiers; APIs and SDKs serve developers; a few still sell lifetime licences. The shady tier has one stream: a tiny entry price that becomes a monthly charge.
| Product | Subscription | Ads | API / SDK | Team / business | Lifetime licence | Notes |
|---|
Latest revenue in US dollars (≈ converted), with the reported original currency in brackets, plus profit, model and scale.
| Company | Status | Latest revenue | Period | Profit | How it earns | Scale and value | Source |
|---|
Sort by any column, or search by name, tier or note. The source column links to the page each figure came from.
Figures come from the Alpo PDF market research of 24–25 October 2026: third-party traffic estimates (Semrush, Similarweb, Ahrefs, OneLittleWeb) and security reports (CloudSEK via ThaiCERT). Estimates are modelled, periods differ by site and are labelled, and no tracker publishes figures for the shady subscription-trap sites. Search volumes marked indicative are aggregates whose original page was not identified. Revenue figures are as published by each source, in the reported currency; pdfFiller revenue per paying customer is calculated ($106M ÷ 860K). Non-dollar amounts are converted to US dollars at approximate annual average rates and shown with the original in brackets: 2023 CNY 7.084 and AUD 0.664 (IRS yearly averages); 2024 EUR 1.082 USD and CNY 7.189 (IRS yearly averages); FY2025 CNY 7.19 and Avanquest FY25 (Jul 2024–Jun 2025) EUR 1.08 USD are estimates, not verified against an official table. Conversions are indicative, not audited.