Recast by Adel Labs
Guide ↗

PDF & SCAN TEXT EDITOR

Change a line.
Keep the page.

Recast rewrites text inside a PDF or a scan on your own device, reusing the page's own typeface and leaving every other glyph where it was.

PDF · PNG · JPEG · WEBP · UP TO 60 MB

PDF Invoice specimen1 page · scan
1 / 1
0
100%

The page is drawn here. Detected lines can be selected from the Text list in the page rail, then edited in the inspector. Arrow keys change page; F fits the page; 1 restores 100 per cent.

Invoice specimen p 1/1 100% 0 edits No selection Local only · 0 uploads

TYPE LIBRARY

Every bundled family, with its licence

Matches for the selected line come first. The rest of the library is searchable and loads one file at a time, only when a family is used.

How Recast compares

The comparison below is narrow on purpose: whether the tool rewrites text that is already on the page, whether the file has to be uploaded first, and what it costs.

  Recast Acrobat (Adobe) PDF Expert UPDF Smallpdf iLovePDF Sejda
Edit text in place Yes. The original run is removed from the page content stream and replaced. Yes in the paid app: content-stream rewrite with paragraph reconstruction. The free online editor “does not let you edit existing body text within a PDF.” Yes. Line and box level content edit. Yes. Click a line or a paragraph and edit inside the box. No. Annotation and overlay text boxes; existing body text is not edited. No. Annotation and overlay text boxes; existing body text is not edited. Partly. A white box over the old text plus a new text object, one line at a time, no reflow.
Keeps page vector and searchable Yes for digital PDFs. On a scan, only the edited patch is raster. Yes. Editing rewrites the content stream rather than rasterising the page. Yes. The page content is edited rather than replaced by an image. Yes. The page content is edited rather than replaced by an image. Original body text is left in place underneath the overlay. Original body text is left in place underneath the overlay. Original text stays in the file, hidden under a white box.
Works without upload Yes. Static files, everything runs in the browser tab. No for the online editor: “Your file will be securely handled by Adobe servers and deleted unless you sign in to save it.” Not stated. Not stated. Not stated. No. Files are processed on iLovePDF’s platform and “automatically and permanently deleted within two hours of being processed.” Not in the browser version. Sejda Desktop, a separate purchase, states “files are processed on your computer, not uploaded to our servers.”
No account needed Yes. No: “signing in with a free Adobe account is required to download or share your edited files.” Not stated. Not stated. Not stated. Not stated. Yes on the free tier, which needs no signup.
Price Free at recast.adelstudio.dev. Standard $14.99/month billed annually ($179.88/year) or $24.99/month month-to-month; Pro $19.99/month ($239.88/year); Acrobat Studio $24.99/month ($299.88/year). Served in AED from the UAE: Essential AED 199.99/year, Pro AED 309.99/year, Lifetime AED 499.99 one-time. Third-party USD figures: about $79.99/year and a $139.99 perpetual. Not published as text; the pricing page renders prices from JavaScript. Third-party trackers report about $49.99/year and about $79.99 perpetual. Pricing page could not be fetched cleanly. Third-party reports Pro $15/month, Teams $12/user/month, and a free tier of two tasks per day. Free tier; Premium $7/month monthly, or $4/month billed annually at $48/year. Free tier with page and hourly limits. Web: Week Pass $5, Monthly $7.50, Annual $63/user/year. Sejda Desktop is a separate purchase: Week Pass $7.95, Annual $63/year.
Platform Any current browser. Nothing to install. Free tools run in the browser at adobe.com. Desktop platform list not stated. Mac for the listed plans; Mac and iOS. “1 payment covers 4 devices across platforms.” Not stated. Not stated. Browser, plus a separately purchased desktop app. Web plans state “No access to Sejda Desktop.”
Competitor details as published on their sites, checked 15 September 2026.
Sources

SAMPLE WORKFLOW / SELECT → REPLACE → COMPARE

HOW IT WORKS

Three steps, one device

  1. 01

    Open the page

    Drop a PDF or an image on the stage. A digital PDF gives its text runs straight away. A scan gets OCR, on your machine, in the language you pick.

  2. 02

    Replace the line

    Type the new wording. Recast reuses the embedded font when it can, falls back to a metric-compatible family, and shows you which tier you are on.

  3. 03

    Check, then export

    Split view puts the original beside the edit. Export keeps unedited pages exactly as they were.

WHY LOCAL

The document never leaves the tab

Contracts, medical letters and invoices are the pages people most often need to correct, and the ones least suited to an upload. Recast loads pdf.js, pdf-lib and Tesseract from its own folder and does the work in your browser. The status bar counts requests to any other origin; it should read zero, and you can check it in the network panel.

Export

Choose how the edited pages are written.

Text that runs past its box

These replacements may overlap neighbouring content. Open one to adjust it, or keep the placement.