PDF Pals

PDF Pals is a macOS desktop app for professionals who need to ask questions, extract details, and summarize information from PDFs on a personal Mac.

Key capabilities include:

• Chat with single or multiple PDFs to compare documents and pull cross-file insights, with support for very large files (tested with 2,000-page ebooks).
• Cited answers that reference the source text in the PDF for faster verification.
• OCR for scanned PDFs and complex forms, enabling Q&A on documents that are not text-selectable.
• Privacy-first local analysis, including automatic redaction of sensitive information, no in-app analytics, and no file uploads; data and chats store locally (SQLite), and API keys store in Apple Keychain.

Pricing: Paid. One-time perpetual licenses, Personal $29 (1 device, 1 year of updates) and Pro $180 (3 devices, lifetime access). Also available via Setapp (from $9.99/month) and an App Store subscription option (ChatPDF Premium Weekly $4.99).

Notable for combining local, on-device PDF analysis with extensive customization (model/provider selection including OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, and OpenRouter, temperature, context limits, language, Markdown, code highlighting, LaTeX) in a native macOS app (macOS 13+ on Intel or Apple Silicon).