Add Watermark to PDF

Stamp a text or logo watermark onto a PDF — diagonal, tiled across the page, or tucked behind the content. Choose the pages, watch every page in the live preview, then download. 100% in your browser, nothing uploaded.

Drop a PDF to watermark

or click to choose a file

.pdf files · processed in your browser

100% in your browser
No upload, no signup
Above or behind content
No size or page limits

Why Add a Watermark to a PDF

Adding a watermark to a PDF is the cheapest way to say two things at once: this copy is mine, and this version isn't final. It says them on every page, in every viewer, without locking anybody out of the file or asking them for a password.

People add a watermark to a PDF for three very different jobs. A DRAFT or SAMPLE mark stops someone circulating a version you haven't signed off. A logo or copyright line claims the work as yours when the file gets forwarded on. And a client name or CONFIDENTIAL stamp makes it obvious where a leaked copy came from — which is why legal, HR and finance teams ask for one before anything leaves the building.

The reason the label has to sit on the page is simple: everything else falls off. File names get changed, metadata is invisible, and the email it arrived in is gone by the second forward. Only what is printed on the page travels with the document. So people add a watermark to a PDF at the last step, once the file is final — which is exactly when the original Word or InDesign source is no longer around to redo it in.

What a PDF Watermark Is — and What It Isn't

A PDF watermark is a text or image object drawn onto every page you choose — either over the content or underneath it — so the mark travels with the file into any viewer, any printout, and any device.

When you add a watermark to a PDF there are two places the mark can sit, and the difference matters more than it looks. Above the content it lies on top of the text, which is what you want for DRAFT or CONFIDENTIAL: it is unmissable, and it survives a screenshot or a photo of the screen. Behind the content the page text prints over the mark instead, which keeps the document comfortable to read — the right choice for a logo on a report or a proposal you actually want people to read. One caveat: a scanned page is a single flat image, so anything placed behind it is hidden completely. Scans need the mark on top.

It is worth being blunt about the other half of the question, because a lot of tools are not. A watermark is a label, not a lock. When you add a watermark to a PDF as text, that text is a real object in the file — it can be selected, and software exists that strips it out. If you need a document that genuinely cannot be altered, you want a password, a certificate signature, or both; a watermark is not encryption and was never meant to be.

What you can do is raise the effort it takes. Tile the mark so it crosses every column of text instead of sitting in one corner. Keep it above the content and semi-transparent so removing it leaves an obvious hole. Or switch on Flatten, which rasterises each page: nothing on it stays selectable, so there is no watermark object left to delete. The trade-off is honest and worth knowing — your body text stops being selectable and searchable too, and the file gets noticeably bigger.

How to Add a Watermark to a PDF in 3 Steps

No software to install, no account, and no Acrobat licence. Here is how to add a watermark to a PDF entirely in your browser, with every page previewed before you download.

Open your PDF

Drag the file in or click to choose it. It opens on your device — nothing is uploaded, which is the whole point when the document is the kind that needs a CONFIDENTIAL stamp.

Design the watermark

Type your own text or tap a preset like DRAFT. Or switch to Image and drop in a logo. Set the angle, opacity and colour, place it on the nine-point grid or tile it across the page, and choose Above or Behind the content. Pick pages by clicking thumbnails or typing a range.

Add watermark & download

That is the whole job: the watermark is added to the PDF and written into the file and the watermarked PDF downloads straight away. Open it in any reader, on any device, or print it — the watermark is part of the page.

Pro tip: Watermarking a bundle you are about to send out? Number the pages in the same pass with the add page numbers tool.

Diagonal, Tiled, or Behind the Text — Every Option Explained

Put the watermark behind the text. This is the option people mean when they ask how to add a watermark to a PDF without covering the writing. Most free online watermark tools can only stamp on top; of the four biggest, exactly one offers a behind-the-content option. This one does it by writing the mark into the page before the page's own content, which is what the PDF format actually calls for — so the text stays crisp and fully readable on top of it. Use Above for DRAFT and CONFIDENTIAL, Behind for logos and letterheads, and Above for anything scanned.

Diagonal watermarks at any angle — the look most people picture when they add a watermark to a PDF. The classic 45° diagonal is one tap, but the rotation control is a continuous slider from −180° to 180°, so you can match a house style exactly rather than picking from four or five fixed steps like most tools offer. Opacity is continuous too, anywhere from 5% to 100%. Somewhere between 20% and 35% is almost always right: dark enough to be unmistakable in print, light enough that nobody has to squint past it.

Tiled watermarks that cover the whole page. A single mark in the middle of the page is easy to crop out of a screenshot; a tiled grid crossing every paragraph is not. Choose sparse, medium or dense, and the pattern is laid out to the page's own proportions so landscape pages don't come out lopsided. This is the setting to use when you add a watermark to a PDF specifically to discourage redistribution.

Text or a logo, in any language. You can add a watermark to a PDF as type or as artwork. Text marks use the fonts built into every PDF reader, so they render identically everywhere and cost the file almost nothing. Type in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Greek, Cyrillic or Arabic and the text is instead rendered at high resolution and embedded as an image — a limitation of the PDF standard fonts that most browser-based tools simply fail on. For a logo, drop in a PNG, JPG, SVG, GIF or WebP; a transparent PNG looks best, and the image is embedded once and reused on every page, so a 300-page document costs the same as a 3-page one.

Exactly the pages you want — including odd or even. You can add a watermark to a PDF on some pages and leave the rest untouched. Click page thumbnails to pick them, or type a range like 2- to skip the cover, 5-9 for a section, or the words odd and even for one side of a double-sided print. None of the four big tools offers odd/even pages, and one of them applies the watermark to every page whether you like it or not. Combine it with the live preview and you can see precisely which pages are marked before anything is written.

Other ways to add a watermark to a PDF, and their catches. Adobe Acrobat Standard and Pro can do it, but the free Acrobat Reader cannot — watermarking is not in the free tier at all, which is the single most common reason people end up looking for something else. Microsoft Word can add one before you export, but not to a PDF you already have, and it will not help when the source document is long gone. Desktop utilities work well and cost either money or an install. Everything on this page happens in a browser tab, on your own machine, for free.

Common ways people use it:

CONFIDENTIAL stamp
DRAFT or SAMPLE
Company logo
Diagonal 45°
Tiled across the page
Behind the text
Odd pages only

Watermark a PDF on Any Device — Without Acrobat

You do not need Acrobat to add a watermark to a PDF. The free Adobe Acrobat Reader cannot do it at all — that feature lives in Acrobat Standard and Pro. A browser can, on any operating system, with nothing to install and no account to create.

§ 01

Windows & Mac

Open the tool in Chrome, Edge, Safari or Firefox, drop the PDF in, add the watermark, and download the file. No Acrobat licence, no Adobe sign-in, no desktop install.

§ 02

Chromebook & Linux

Acrobat has no desktop version here at all, which usually means uploading to some website. You can add a watermark to a PDF in the browser instead, so a school Chromebook or an Ubuntu laptop works the same as anything else.

§ 03

iPhone, iPad & Android

The controls and the page grid work with touch, so you can add a watermark to a PDF on your phone before you forward it — no app to install.

How This Compares to Other Free Watermark Tools

All four of the best-known free tools for adding a watermark to a PDF online upload your document to a server before they touch it. Here is how the feature sets line up, checked against their live tools rather than their marketing.

	This tool	iLovePDF	Smallpdf	PDF24	Sejda
Image / logo watermark	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
Tiled across the page	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Any rotation angle	Yes	5 fixed steps	—	Yes	Yes
Watermark behind the content	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Choose specific pages	Yes	Not with multiple files	No — all pages	No	Yes
Odd / even pages only	Yes	No	No	No	No
Live preview of every page	Yes	Yes	—	No preview	Yes
Is your file uploaded?	Never	Uploaded	Uploaded	Uploaded	Uploaded

Credit where it is due: iLovePDF offers nine fonts including Devanagari, and Sejda has saved templates and free-drag placement — neither of which this tool has yet. What none of them has is a version that never uploads your file.

Your Confidential PDF Never Leaves Your Browser

The documents people add a watermark to a PDF for are, almost by definition, the ones they least want to hand to a stranger: contracts, NDAs, unreleased drafts, client deliverables. It is worth noticing what the usual workflow asks of you — upload the confidential file to someone else's server, and trust a line of text promising it will be deleted in an hour or two.

This tool never uploads it: the watermark is added to the PDF on your own machine. The watermark is drawn into the PDF by your own browser, which is why there is no sign-in, no daily quota, no file-size cap and no watermark of our own added to your output — there is simply nothing on our side to meter. One of the bigger services sells exactly this as a paid desktop app, on the strength of the files never leaving your computer. Here it is the default, in a browser tab, for free. Want proof? Load the page, turn off your Wi-Fi, and add the watermark anyway — it still works, and your browser's Network panel shows zero file requests.

§ 01

No upload

Your PDF is read, marked and rewritten locally with in-browser code. It never travels to a server.

§ 02

No account

Nothing to sign in to before you download, and nothing kept after you close the tab.

§ 03

No limits

Any file size, any page count, as often as you like. The only ceiling is your own device's memory.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I add a watermark to a PDF for free?⌄

To add a watermark to a PDF for free, open it here, type your text or drop in a logo, set the position and opacity, and click Add watermark & download. It is free with no sign-up, no file-size limit and no watermark of our own, because everything runs in your browser.

Can I add a watermark with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader?⌄

No. Watermarking is not included in the free Acrobat Reader — you need Acrobat Standard or Pro, which are paid. That is the most common reason people look for a browser-based tool, and this one needs neither a licence nor an Adobe account.

How do I put the watermark behind the text?⌄

Switch the Layer control to Behind content. The mark is written into the page before the page's own content, so your text prints on top of it and stays fully readable. The exception is scanned PDFs: a scan is one flat image, so use Above content for those.

How do I add a CONFIDENTIAL or DRAFT watermark?⌄

To add a CONFIDENTIAL or DRAFT watermark to a PDF, tap the matching preset, or type anything you like — a client name, a date, a case number. The default 45° diagonal at 30% opacity is the classic look, and you can adjust both.

Can I use my company logo as a watermark?⌄

Yes. Switch to the Image tab and drop in a PNG, JPG, SVG, GIF or WebP. A transparent PNG works best because the page shows through around the logo. The image is embedded once and reused on every page, so page count barely affects the file size.

Can a watermark be removed from a PDF?⌄

Honestly: a text watermark is a real object in the file, so software exists that can strip it out. A watermark is a label, not a lock. To make it much harder, tile it across the page and keep it above the content — or switch on Flatten, which rasterises every page so there is no watermark object left to select.

Can I watermark only some pages, or only odd and even pages?⌄

Yes. You can add a watermark to a PDF on selected pages only — click the page thumbnails to choose them, or type a range like 2- to skip the cover, 5-9 for one section, or the words odd and even. Several well-known tools apply the watermark to every page with no way to change it.

Does adding a watermark increase the PDF file size?⌄

A text watermark adds almost nothing. An image watermark adds roughly the size of the image once, however many pages you mark. Flatten is the exception — it converts pages to images and will make the file considerably bigger, so compress the PDF afterwards if that matters.

Will the watermark show up when the PDF is printed?⌄

Yes. When you add a watermark to a PDF here it becomes part of each page's content rather than a viewer setting, so it appears in every PDF reader and on every printout, exactly where the preview showed it.

Does watermarking reduce quality or rasterise my PDF?⌄

No. By default nothing is re-encoded: your text stays selectable, images keep their resolution, and only the mark is added. Pages are only converted to images if you deliberately turn on Flatten.

Can I add a watermark in Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Arabic?⌄

Yes — you can add a watermark to a PDF in any script. The fonts built into the PDF format only cover Latin characters, so text in other scripts is rendered at high resolution and embedded as an image instead. You get the same result without the tool needing to ship a huge font file.

Is my file uploaded anywhere?⌄

No. Your PDF is read and rewritten entirely in your browser. You can disconnect from the internet after the page loads and it still works, and nothing is stored anywhere.

Add a watermark to your PDF — free, private, no upload

Add a watermark to a PDF as text or a logo, diagonal or tiled, above or behind the content, on exactly the pages you choose. Preview every page, then download — all in your browser.

Add watermark

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