CommonLook vs Includoc

CommonLook is a family of document accessibility products from Allyant, a company that also provides human remediation services. Its best-known tool, CommonLook PDF, is built for accessibility specialists who fix PDFs by hand. It began as desktop software that works as a plug-in to Adobe Acrobat, and since 2025 it's also available as a web-based version with AI auto-tagging. CommonLook pricing isn't published; you request a quote. Includoc is a self-serve web app that checks and fixes documents automatically for people who aren't remediation experts, with published per-page prices and optional human verification. Both aim at accessible documents, but they suit different teams.

What CommonLook offers

• CommonLook PDF: a tool for testing, repairing and reporting on PDFs, with detailed control over tags (the hidden structure behind an accessible PDF), tables and forms. It started as desktop software that runs inside Adobe Acrobat. In July 2025, Allyant announced (opens another website) a web-based version with AI-driven auto-tagging that runs in any browser, including on a Mac.
• CommonLook Office: an add-in for Word and PowerPoint that creates accessible PDFs from inside those apps.
• CommonLook Clarity: a tool for finding documents across a website and tracking their accessibility status.
• CommonLook PDF Validator: a free tool for checking PDF accessibility.
• Allyant's services: Allyant also remediates documents for you. Ohio State's published supplier list shows Allyant at $5 a page for standard pages and $20 to $100 a page for forms.

Where CommonLook is strong

• Built for experts. Detailed control over the tag tree, complex tables and forms suits trained remediators working on difficult documents.
• A long track record. Allyant describes CommonLook PDF as building on more than two decades of development, and it has been used by remediation professionals for many years.
• A services arm. If a project is too big or too complex for your team, the same company can do the work for you.
• Office and website tools in the same family, for organizations that want one vendor for several jobs.

Where it may not fit

• Pricing isn't public. You need a sales conversation to get a number. Published university purchasing documents describe annual licenses per named user, so costs grow with the size of your team.
• It's a specialist tool. CommonLook PDF assumes you understand tags, reading order and table structure. Teams without a trained remediator may find the learning curve steep.
• The desktop version runs inside Acrobat, so desktop users work within Adobe Acrobat as well.
• People still do much of the fixing. AI auto-tagging in the web version speeds up the first pass, but an expert tool still expects a person to review and correct the structure.

Where Includoc is different

• Self-serve for non-specialists. Communications staff, clerks, faculty and consultants can check and fix documents without training in PDF tags. Results are in plain English.
• Published prices. The check is free. Fixing is $1.50/page on pay as you go, Pro is $99/mo and the Organization plan starts at $3,600/yr. The human-verified tier is $4 a page for standard pages, $7 for complex pages and $20 for forms.
• Automatic fixing with a review step. Tags, lists, table structure, links, form fields, tab order, title, language and bookmarks are fixed for you, and we set a column-aware reading order. Our AI drafts alt text and suggests headings and table headers, and you approve each judgment call on a review screen.
• Results mapped to the standards you're judged by. Each result is mapped to WCAG 2.1 AA, PDF/UA-1 (the ISO standard for accessible PDFs) and the Matterhorn Protocol, with the matching Acrobat and PAC messages.
• Organization tools in one plan. Organization plans include a website document inventory, monitoring of new uploads, exemption tracking, board reports and invoice or purchase order billing.

There's a trade-off. Includoc gives you less hands-on control than an expert tool: there's no full tag-tree editor, and the review screen focuses on alt text, headings, reading order, tables and document properties. If your team needs to hand-edit every tag, a specialist tool such as CommonLook PDF or Acrobat Pro gives you more control.

Side by side

Which should you choose?

• Choose CommonLook, or Acrobat Pro, if you have trained remediators who need full control over difficult documents, or if you want an established vendor that also offers full-service remediation.
• Choose Includoc if the people publishing documents aren't remediation experts, if you need to clear a large backlog at a predictable per-page price, or if you need a website inventory and evidence of progress for your organization.
• Use both if your specialists handle the hardest files in an expert tool while everyone else uses Includoc for volume. Includoc's output is a standard tagged PDF that any remediation tool can open.

To compare costs with full-service vendors, see Includoc vs manual PDF remediation, and for Adobe's built-in checker, see Adobe Acrobat's checker vs Includoc. For the standard both tools test against, read PDF/UA explained. Or check a PDF free and compare pricing.

Sources

• Allyant: announcement of the web-based, AI-driven CommonLook PDF (July 2025) (opens another website)
• The Ohio State University: PDF remediation suppliers (opens another website)