SwiftPDF vs PDFsam Basic
PDFsam Basic has been the free go-to for one specific job: splitting and merging PDFs. SwiftPDF does both of those, plus everything else. Both are free. So which one should sit in your Downloads folder?
What PDFsam Basic does
PDFsam is good at its narrow job. Split by page range, merge several PDFs into one, rotate pages, extract specific pages. If that's all you ever need, it works. The catch is that's all it does. You can't edit text, replace an image, annotate, or fill out a form. Anything beyond page-shuffling is off the table.
What SwiftPDF does
Everything PDFsam does, plus: text editing, image replacement, annotations, form filling, conversion to and from Office formats, OCR, batch processing, and password protection. It's a full PDF editor, not just a page organizer.
Interface
PDFsam works, but the interface looks like a Java app from 2010, because that's what it is. SwiftPDF has a native Windows UI with a preview pane and toolbars that don't make you guess.
Speed
PDFsam can crawl on large PDFs because of Java overhead. SwiftPDF is native code and chews through big files faster, especially in batch.
Privacy
Both process files locally. Nothing gets uploaded. Tie.
Bottom line
If you are 100% sure all you will ever do is split and merge, PDFsam is fine. For everything else — and for a smoother experience even on the split/merge basics — SwiftPDF is the better pick, at the same price.