Bluebeam Revu 20, the last version Bluebeam ever sold as a buy-once perpetual licence, reaches End of Support on July 31, 2026, about six weeks from now. After that date you lose technical support and, critically, the ability to move your licence to a new computer. The only upgrade Bluebeam offers is Revu 21, which is subscription only. And if you work on a Mac, Bluebeam already left: the native Mac version of Revu was discontinued back in 2023. So a lot of people are in the same spot. You bought Revu once because owning your tools made sense, you do not want to start renting them by the seat per year, and some of you need it to run on a Mac at all. That is exactly the situation Ncored was built for. Ncored is a desktop PDF editor for architects, engineers and construction teams, made by Noir architects, a working architecture studio in Vilnius. It opens heavy 50-200 MB+ CAD project sets fast and stays smooth on scroll and zoom. It costs 159 EUR once, for a lifetime licence with all future updates. It runs on Apple Silicon Mac and on Windows. And there is a 14-day trial with no signup, so you can open your own heaviest drawing before you decide anything.

If you are a Revu 20 holder or a Mac refugee, here is the pain

You hold a Revu 20 perpetual licence and the End of Support clock is ticking. Your software does not stop working on July 31, but after that date you cannot reassign the licence to a new machine. Replace a laptop in 2027 and the licence does not come with you. The official path forward, Revu 21, is subscription only, roughly 260 to 440 USD per user per year at Bluebeam's published US pricing (the top tier goes higher still). For a small studio, that is a recurring bill for a tool you used to simply own. Or you are on a Mac. Bluebeam ended its native Mac product in 2023. There is no current, supported, native Mac Revu to move to. You are looking at virtual machines, a Windows box in the corner, or a subscription to a tool that no longer treats your platform as a first-class citizen. Either way, the daily reality is the same. Most of what you actually do in Revu is open a heavy drawing set, scroll and zoom around it, mark it up, search it, stamp it, and send it on. You are paying suite prices, and increasingly subscription prices, for a fraction of the feature surface.

Why Ncored fits: buy once, own it, on Mac or Windows

Ncored does the daily job and charges accordingly. You buy it once for 159 EUR, a lifetime licence with all future updates included, the same buy-once model your Revu 20 came with. (Prefer to spread it out? 12.99 EUR per month or 79.99 EUR per year per seat are also available.) It runs natively on Apple Silicon (M-series) Macs running macOS Big Sur 11 or newer, and on Windows 10 and 11, so mixed-platform offices are covered. (Note: Apple Silicon only, there is no Intel Mac build.) It opens 50-200 MB+ project sets exported from AutoCAD, Revit, and ArchiCAD fast, then stays smooth on scroll, zoom, pinch and pan, which is exactly the moment general-purpose PDF tools stall. For reference, on the same heavy set Adobe Acrobat Pro and Apple Preview take 8 to 12 seconds to settle. Markup is written as standard PDF annotations, so your comments and highlights open correctly in Bluebeam Revu, Adobe Acrobat, Apple Preview, Foxit, and any other conforming viewer. Nothing gets trapped in a proprietary format, and your drawings stay on your machine with no cloud upload required.

Buy once, own it
159 EUR one time, lifetime licence, all future updates. The same buy-once model your Revu 20 came with (or 12.99 EUR/mo, 79.99 EUR/yr per seat).
Apple Silicon Mac and Windows
Native on Apple Silicon (M-series) Macs on macOS Big Sur 11 or newer, and Windows 10 and 11. Apple Silicon only, no Intel Mac build.
Built for heavy drawings
Opens 50-200 MB+ project sets from AutoCAD, Revit, and ArchiCAD fast, then stays smooth on scroll, zoom, pinch and pan.
A full markup set
Freehand pen, rectangle, ellipse, revision cloud, polygon and polyline (8 line styles), highlight in five colours, text, comment pins, eraser, plus select, copy, paste and undo/redo.
In-place text editing
Click existing PDF text and edit it directly, including rotated CAD labels and accented characters, without round-tripping back to your CAD program.
Permanent redaction
Cover an area and on save it is burned permanently into the PDF. The hidden content cannot be recovered.
Stamps from your own image
Upload your firm's seal or an approval graphic (two slots, scale, rotate), with one-click white-background removal. Saved in the PDF and reusable.
Flatten & Compress
Flatten annotations and stamps into the page and recompress images to a target DPI up to 600 to shrink a set before you send it.
Search, merge, pages, print
Full-text search across a multi-page set, combine PDFs, reorder, rotate and delete pages, and print with markup at paper sizes up to A0.
Your drawings stay local
No cloud upload required. For NDA and confidential project work, the files never leave your computer.

Try the 14-day free trial

Download Ncored

Honest comparison: where Ncored fits, and where it does not

We are not going to pretend Ncored is Bluebeam. It is a smaller, faster, cheaper tool that covers the daily job, not the whole suite. Where Ncored wins: buy once at 159 EUR lifetime instead of a Revu 21 subscription (roughly 260 to 440 USD per user per year), native Apple Silicon Mac (the platform Bluebeam discontinued in 2023) alongside Windows 10 and 11, fast opening and smooth scroll and zoom on heavy 50-200 MB+ CAD sets, in-place text editing, permanent redaction, Flatten & Compress to a target DPI up to 600, own-image stamps with one-click white-background removal, standard PDF annotations that open anywhere, and files that stay local with no cloud upload. Where Bluebeam wins: calibrated measurement and takeoff (this is on Ncored's roadmap but is NOT shipped, and we will not pretend otherwise), Studio-style live cloud sessions, cloud collaboration and RFI workflows, an arrow or leader-line callout tool (Ncored uses comment pins instead), layer (OCG) show/hide toggling (Ncored opens layered PDFs but offers no toggle), form filling, OCR, and a larger markup library. So, plainly: if calibrated measurement and takeoff, live Studio Sessions, or cloud collaboration and RFI workflows are central to how your office runs, Ncored is not a like-for-like replacement, and a Bluebeam subscription is the honest answer. If what you actually use Revu for is opening heavy drawings, marking them up, redacting, stamping, searching and shipping, and you would rather own that tool than rent it, Ncored covers that day, on a Mac or on Windows, for a one-time price. A practical pairing many will find sensible: keep Revu 20 installed for the occasional job that needs its deeper tools, and do the daily open-mark-up-send work in Ncored.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will my Bluebeam markups open in Ncored, and the other way around?
Standard PDF annotations (highlights, comments, text, shapes) transfer correctly both ways, because both tools write to the PDF specification's annotation layer. Bluebeam-specific features like Studio Sessions and custom toolsets are Bluebeam-only and do not transfer.
Is Ncored a replacement for Bluebeam Studio?
No. Ncored has no equivalent of Studio Sessions or any live cloud collaboration. If shared real-time sessions are central to your workflow, you need Revu 21 or a collaboration-first tool. Ncored replaces the local part of most days: opening heavy drawings fast and marking them up.
Does Ncored have measurement and takeoff like Revu?
Not yet. There is no calibrated measurement tool today, and no takeoff database. Distance and area measurement with drawing-scale calibration is on the roadmap but is not shipped. If you depend on takeoff, stay with Bluebeam for that work.
Does it run on a Mac?
Yes, natively on Apple Silicon Macs (M-series) running macOS Big Sur 11 or newer. There is no Intel Mac build. This is the gap Bluebeam left when it discontinued native Mac Revu in 2023.
I bought Revu 20 because I prefer owning software. What now?
Bluebeam no longer sells perpetual licences; Revu 21 is subscription only. Ncored kept the buy-once model: 159 EUR once for a lifetime licence with all future updates. Try it on your own heaviest drawing first with the 14-day trial.
What does the trial require?
Nothing to enter. The 14-day trial is full-featured with no signup, no email, no credit card. Download, install, and open your real files right away. After the trial, an account and licence are required to keep using Ncored.