Honest comparison
Most UK organisations doing disclosure work use Acrobat — reasonably: it's good at general PDF work and competent at single-document redaction. SureRedact closes the gap for SAR / FOI caseload at scale. Here's what each does well, and where they sit beside each other.
| Capability | Adobe Acrobat Pro | SureRedact |
|---|---|---|
| Single-document redaction | Yes (mature; with caveat re: Sanitize) | Yes (forensic by default; no text under the box; no escape from sanitisation) |
| Bulk import for in-context redaction | Partial — can search a folder for user-defined terms, but in-context review is one document at a time | SureRedact Free bulk-imports PDFs for context-aware redaction. Professional adds bulk import of Office files, TXT, CSV, HTML, and image scans — converted to PDF locally, with no third-party service in the path. |
| Tamper-evident audit log | No | Write-once decisions log; tamper-evident; published with every disclosure pack |
| Auto-detect PII | No (pattern search only; you specify what to find) | SureRedact surfaces signatures, phone numbers, email addresses and credentials automatically in Free — each suggested redaction is yours to confirm. Professional adds names and addresses where a table or spreadsheet column is clearly and unambiguously labelled, plus dates of birth and UK postcodes; ambiguous tables and free-text prose stay with you, and the app shows you what it did not scan. Its vertical packs extend to that free text — the SAR pack (from early 2027) adds inline-prose name detection, works out whose personal data each match is, and covers national identifiers (UPN, NHS number, ULN). |
| Credential detection (passwords, API keys, private keys) | No (you have to know to search for them) | Auto-detected in Free from launch |
| Disclosure pack output (manifest, decisions log, redaction certificate) | No | SureRedact Professional |
| Cost (UK list) | ~£20 / user / month for Acrobat Pro for teams | Free for SureRedact (unlimited PDF); £499 / user / year + VAT for SureRedact Professional (annual only) |
Keep Acrobat for general PDF creation, editing, form-fill, and signatures — the things it's genuinely best at. Use SureRedact for disclosure-preparation redaction at the caseload scale Acrobat doesn't handle. The two sit beside each other on the same desktop.
Quick math: 10 SARs a year at ~200 pages, £35 / hour, 6 minutes / page ≈ 200 hours ≈ £7,000 / year of staff time. SureRedact's keyboard-first review, auto-detection, and audit log cut the time per page substantially. Try the SAR cost calculator with your own numbers.
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Adobe and Adobe Acrobat are trademarks of Adobe Inc.; this comparison page is editorial and is not endorsed by or affiliated with Adobe. Pricing references are based on publicly published Adobe list prices as of April 2026 and may change. Drafted with AI assistance, reviewed by Simon. Accuracy concerns to hello@surematters.com.
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