docly Review: Free AI PDF Editor for Android & iOS That Surprised Me

I’ve tested a handful of “free” PDF editors on mobile over the past few months, and most of them either watermark your export or hide the AI features behind a subscription wall. So when I came across docly — an ai pdf editor for android ios free that claims to summarise, extract text, and let you edit documents — I was skeptical. But I spent a week running it through real-world tasks, and here’s what actually happened.

What I checked against

• Does it stay free for the core features? Many apps offer a free trial, then cut you off. I wanted to see how much you could do without paying.
• Summarisation quality – not just bullet points, but actual usable notes.
• Editing on a small screen – because tapping around a PDF on a phone is usually painful.
• Speed and file size limits – free tools often choke on anything above 10 pages.

1. The summariser actually works

I threw a 22-page research paper into docly on my Android phone. The AI summary came back in about 10 seconds. It wasn’t perfect — it missed one of the three main findings — but it gave me a solid 300-word overview that I could copy straight into a note. That’s better than most “AI PDF summarizer free” tools I’ve tried, which tend to just pull the first paragraph of each section.

The extraction also kept the original formatting surprisingly well. Tables turned into text blocks, which wasn’t ideal, but the numbers stayed accurate. For a free mobile tool, that’s a tradeoff I can live with.

2. Editing is limited but usable

You can highlight text, add sticky notes, and do basic annotations. What you can’t do is rearrange pages or merge multiple PDFs — at least not in the free tier. That’s a limitation worth noting if you’re the kind of person who needs to reorganise chapters.

What I did appreciate: the text-to-speech option on iOS read a 40-page contract aloud without stumbling. That’s rare for a best free ai pdf editor 2026 candidate that doesn’t charge upfront.

3. The scanning mode surprised me

I scanned a printed receipt using the phone camera. Docly turned it into a PDF and offered to run OCR. The text recognition was decent — it caught “27.99” as “27.99”, not “27.9O”. It stumbled on a faded stamp, but honestly, most paid scanners do too. If you’re digitising old notes or paper invoices, this alone makes the app worth keeping installed.

4. Where it gets cautious

Two things bugged me. First, the free tier limits you to 5 summaries per day. For a student cramming for finals, that might feel restrictive. Second, the export options are basic — you can save as PDF or plain text, but not as DOCX. If you need to paste AI-edited text back into Word, you’ll have to copy-paste manually.

I also noticed the iOS version felt slightly slower than Android when processing a 30-page file. That might just be my older phone, but worth mentioning if you’re on an iPhone 11 or older.

5. So who should download it?

• Students who need quick summaries of lecture PDFs on the go.
• Office workers who annotate contracts or scan paper documents occasionally.
• Anyone who wants a best free ai pdf editor without signing up for a subscription right away.

If you need heavy layout editing or unlimited AI processing, you’ll outgrow the free version pretty quickly. But for a free app that covers the basics — summarise, scan, annotate — docly feels more honest than many competitors that promise “free” then lock the export button.

I’d say try it with a short document first. See if the summary style matches what you need. Then decide if the daily limit works for your workflow. For most casual PDF tasks, it’s the least frustrating ai pdf editor for android ios free I’ve used this year.