PDF Tools
Sign PDF
Add an electronic signature to a PDF: draw it, type it or upload a scan, then drag it into place on the page. Add your printed name and the date, and download. Your file and your signature never leave your browser.
Overview
Why sign a PDF electronically?
Open a PDF, draw or type your signature or upload a scan of it, then drag it into place on the page and download a signed copy. Add your printed name and the date underneath if the document needs them, which most agreements do.
What this produces is an electronic signature: an image of your signature drawn into the page. That is what nearly every online signing tool produces, and under eIDAS in Europe and ESIGN and UETA in the United States it is legally sufficient for most commercial agreements. It is not a cryptographic digital signature, and the page says so beside the result rather than letting a green tick imply otherwise.
It also does not lock the document. No tool that stamps an image can: the result is an ordinary PDF that anyone can open and edit. What protects you is holding the signed copy and both parties having the same file, not the stamp. That is worth knowing before relying on it rather than during the argument about it.
Nothing is uploaded, and on this tool that matters more than on any other here. Sending a scan of your signature to a stranger's server hands over a reusable image of it, and sending the contract hands over the contract. Neither is a reasonable price for placing a picture on a page.
Step by step
How to sign a PDF
Choose a PDF
Pick the file from your device. It is opened by your browser and never uploaded, which matters more here than on any other tool.
Draw, type or upload your signature
Sign on the pad with a mouse, finger or stylus, type your name, or upload a photo or scan. All three are trimmed to the ink so the size control means something, and a scan has its white paper removed.
Drag it where it belongs
Drag the signature around the page until it sits on the line, and drag its corner handle to resize. Nine presets cover the usual corners in one click, and the arrow keys nudge it. Then choose one page, a range like 1, 4-6, or every page.
Download the signed PDF
The signature is positioned by the same arithmetic that stamps it, so where you drop it is where it prints: including on rotated pages.
What you get
- Draw it, type it, or upload a photo or scan of your signature
- White paper knocked out of a scan, so it does not cover the line
- Drag it into place on the page, or drop it into a corner in one click
- Resize it by its corner handle, and move it with the arrow keys
- Sign one page, a range of pages, or every page for initialling
- Correct on rotated pages and print-ready crop boxes
- Says plainly what an electronic signature is and is not
Background
What signing a PDF actually does
A signature has never been magic. Its legal work is evidential: it shows that a particular person saw a particular document and intended to be bound by it. A wet signature does that because handwriting is hard to forge convincingly and a physical page is hard to alter invisibly. Neither of those properties survives the move to a file, which is why electronic signing is a family of techniques rather than one thing.
The simplest member of that family is what this tool does. You apply a mark to the document to show intent, and the mark is a picture of your signature. Legally this is a simple electronic signature, and in most jurisdictions it is admissible and enforceable for ordinary commercial agreements: a contract is not denied legal effect merely because it was signed electronically. The exclusions are narrower than people expect and vary: wills, some property deeds, and certain family law documents commonly still require something more.
The next member up adds an audit trail. A signing service records who opened the document, from what address, when, and what they clicked, and binds that record to the file. The signature image is no better than the one here: the evidence is in the log, not the picture. That is what makes those services worth paying for on anything that might be contested, and it is a genuinely different product rather than a nicer version of this one.
The one at the top is a digital signature in the cryptographic sense. A certificate and a private key are used to sign a hash of the document, and the signature is embedded in the PDF in a way any reader can verify. It proves two things a stamped image cannot: that the document has not changed by a single byte since it was signed, and (if the certificate is from a trusted authority), who holds the key. It also requires a certificate, which most people do not have and cannot obtain in a browser.
The confusion between the last two and the first causes real harm, because the words overlap. "Digitally signed" is used loosely to mean any of them. A stamped image carries no certificate, no hash and no key; it is a picture. If somebody asks for a digitally signed PDF and means the cryptographic kind, this tool will not produce it, and it is better to know that now than after sending the file.
The other belief worth dismantling is that signing locks a document. It does not, and the intuition comes from paper, where altering a signed page leaves marks. A PDF with a signature drawn into it is an ordinary PDF: the text can be changed, pages can be swapped, and the signature will sit there unbothered on the altered version. Only a cryptographic signature detects that, which is precisely what it is for.
Not to be confused with
- An electronic signature
- Any mark applied to show intent to be bound: a drawn signature, a typed name, a tick box. What this tool produces, and what most commercial agreements accept.
- A digital signature
- A cryptographic operation using a certificate and a private key. Proves the file is unaltered and, with a trusted certificate, who signed it. Cannot be produced without a certificate.
- A qualified electronic signature
- The eIDAS tier with the strongest legal standing, requiring a qualified certificate and a secure signature device. Equivalent to a handwritten signature by law rather than by argument.
- An audit trail
- The record a signing service keeps of who opened and signed a document, and when. Where the evidential weight of those services actually lives, not in the picture they draw.
- A wet signature
- Ink on paper. Still required for a narrow set of documents, and the reason scanning a signed page remains common even where it is not.
- Flattening
- Drawing something into the page content rather than adding it as an annotation. What makes a signature print reliably and survive a merge, and what makes it permanent.
- A signature field
- A form element in the PDF marking where a signature belongs. Useful for routing a document; empty of legal significance by itself.
Reference
What a signed page should carry
The mark is the smallest part. Most of what makes a signed document useful later is the surrounding detail that a hurried signer leaves off.
The signature itself
Drawn or typed. It shows intent, which is its whole legal function: consistency with your other signatures matters far less than people assume, and neither version is more valid than the other.
Required
Your printed name
A drawn signature is frequently unreadable, and the person who has to act on the document may never have met you. The printed name is what a countersigner, a bank or a court actually reads.
Optional
The date
It matters wherever the agreement takes effect on signature rather than on a stated commencement date, and it settles the order of signing when a document goes back and forth.
Optional
The right page
Usually the last, and sometimes several. Some agreements want initials on every page, which is a convention for showing that nothing was substituted rather than a legal requirement.
Required
A position that does not cover anything
A signature over a clause is a signature over a clause. Dragging it onto the ruled line is not decoration; it keeps the terms readable in the copy that ends up being relied on.
Required
Your capacity, where it is not obvious
Signing for a company rather than yourself is a different act with different consequences. Where the document does not already say so, the printed name should.
Optional
What no stamped signature carries
Proof of who applied it, proof the file is unaltered, and any record of when it was opened. Those need a certificate or a signing service, and it is worth knowing which the document requires.
Optional
Who it helps
Who needs to sign a PDF?
Freelancers and contractors
Contracts, NDAs and statements of work arrive as PDFs and have to go back signed the same day. Printing, signing and scanning is the alternative, and it is worse in every respect including legibility.
Small businesses
Supplier agreements, leases, and the forms that arrive with a note saying to return them signed. Most accept an electronic signature and say so on the form.
Anyone without a printer
The situation the tool exists for. Printing a page to sign it and scanning it back produces a worse document than signing the original, and takes considerably longer.
Anyone signing something confidential
A contract with commercial terms in it is exactly the file not to upload to a free web service. Signing in the browser removes the question entirely.
People asked for initials on every page
A common convention in longer agreements, meant to show that no page was substituted. Tedious on paper and quick here.
Anyone told to send a signed copy urgently
The case where the temptation to use whatever tool appears first is strongest, and where knowing what an electronic signature does and does not prove is worth thirty seconds.
Do it properly
Best practices
Add your printed name as well as the signature
Handwriting is often unreadable and the person acting on the document may not know you. The printed name is what gets read, checked and typed into somebody's system.
Keep the unsigned original
A stamped signature becomes part of the page and cannot be taken out again. If a clause might change before both sides sign, work from the clean file.
Place it on the line, not over the text
The signed copy is the one that gets relied on, and a signature across a clause makes that clause harder to read for everyone who opens it afterwards.
Send the file rather than a photo of it
Photographing a screen or a printout loses resolution and invites questions about what was altered. The PDF is already the document; send that.
Use a signing service when it might be contested
The audit trail is what carries evidential weight, not the image. For anything high-value, disputed or subject to a regulator, that record is the thing you are buying.
Check whether the document type is excluded
Wills, some property deeds and certain family law papers still require more than a simple electronic signature in many jurisdictions. Most commercial agreements do not.
Agree how you will both sign before you start
A document signed electronically by one party and in ink by the other is fine almost everywhere and confusing everywhere. One sentence in an email avoids it.
Avoid these
Common mistakes
Believing the signature locks the document
Treat it as evidence of intent, not as tamper protection. The result is an ordinary PDF that anyone can edit: only a cryptographic signature detects a change, which is what it exists to do.
Calling a stamped signature a digital signature
Say electronic signature, and check which one has been asked for. If somebody wants the cryptographic kind, they need a certificate-based signature and no image-stamping tool will satisfy them.
Uploading a signature image to a free web tool
Sign in the browser. An uploaded signature is a reusable picture of your signature sitting on somebody else's server, and there is no way to get it back.
Printing, signing and scanning
Sign the PDF directly. Scanning produces a larger, worse-looking file, loses any selectable text, and adds nothing legally that signing the original does not already do.
Placing the signature over the terms
Put it on the signature line. The signed version is the one both sides will refer back to, and obscuring a clause in it helps nobody, least of all you.
Leaving the date off a document that turns on it
Add it unless the agreement states its own commencement date. Where a contract takes effect on signature, the date is the term that decides when.
Assuming an electronic signature works for everything
Check the document type and the jurisdiction. The exclusions are narrow but real, and they cluster exactly where the stakes are highest: property, wills and family arrangements.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
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