Sign PDF

Draw, type or upload your signature and place it on the page. Runs entirely in your browser — no account, no upload, no limits.

  • 100% in your browser
  • No upload, no signup
  • No account needed
  • No page or size limit

This adds a handwritten signature to the page. That is an electronic signature — it shows you agreed, but it does not lock the document and it is not a certificate-based digital signature.

Signing without printing anything

The old routine is absurd when you write it down: print a document that was never on paper, sign the paper, scan it back into a file, and send a picture of a page that started as a file. Every step loses a little quality, and the whole thing needs a printer and a scanner that happen to work on the day you need them.

So people sign on screen instead. A rental agreement arrives by email and has to go back the same afternoon. A form from a school or a clinic needs a parent's signature. A contractor sends a quote and wants it approved before starting. In each case the document is fine as it is — the only thing missing is a signature on the right line.

The other reason is where people are. Most of the searches for this are on phones, in places where a printer is not a given. Signing with a finger on a screen, in a browser, without installing anything or making an account, is not a lesser version of the task — for a lot of people it is the only version that is actually available.

Upload toolsTheir server?This toolYour deviceNothing leaves your device, so there is no copy to delete.
Other signing services upload your contract. This one signs it where it is.

Electronic signature or digital signature — they are not the same thing

An electronic signature is any mark you make on a document to show you agree to it: a typed name, a drawn signature, an image of your handwriting. A digital signature is a specific, narrower thing — a cryptographic seal made with a certificate, which covers the whole file and can be checked later by software. This tool makes the first kind.

The difference is not about how the signature looks. It is about what backs it up. When you draw a signature here, the result is ink drawn onto the page: it sits in the document the way a stamp sits on paper. Nothing about it is computed from the rest of the file, so nothing about it changes if the file changes.

A certificate-based digital signature works the other way round. It is calculated over the bytes of the whole document and stored with a certificate that identifies who made it. Change one character afterwards and the seal stops matching, which is exactly the point: it tells a reader both who signed and that nothing has been altered since.

This matters because the two are useful for different things. For agreeing to a rental contract, approving a quote, or returning a school form, an electronic signature is what everyone involved expects and is recognised in law in most places — the ESIGN Act in the United States and eIDAS in the European Union both treat electronic signatures as valid. For filing with a government registry, signing a prescription, or anything where a specific legal standard names certificates, you need the other kind, and no browser tool that never sees your private key can make one for you.

We are only going to tell you which of the two you are getting. What we will not do is call an image of your handwriting "secure" or "tamper-proof", because it is neither, and the next section explains why in the plainest way available.

Drawn onshows intentSealed filedetects changes
Two kinds of signature: one is ink drawn onto a page, the other is a seal computed over the whole file. This tool makes the first.

How to electronically sign a PDF

Nothing to install, no account to make, and the file is never uploaded. Three steps, and the second one is the only one that takes any thought.

Drop a PDFDraw or typePlace & save
Drop the file, make your signature, place it and save.
1

Drop your PDF in

Choose a file or drag it onto the box. It is opened by your own browser, so there is no upload, no queue and no page or size limit beyond what your device can hold.

2

Make your signature

Draw it with a finger, a stylus or the mouse; or type your name and pick a style; or upload a photo of your signature from paper, which has its white background removed automatically.

3

Put it where it belongs

Drag the box onto the signature line and size it to fit. Arrow keys move it in small steps if you would rather not drag. You can place it on one page or on every page.

4

Save the signed file

Download the result. The signature is drawn into the page itself, so it opens the same way everywhere and does not depend on any viewer supporting annotations.

Related: If the signed document should not be edited further, you can also protect it with a password.

What this signing tool does, and what it deliberately does not

Three ways to make a signature, because people arrive with different things to hand. Drawing works with a finger on a phone, which is where most of this traffic is. Typing suits anyone who does not want to draw with a mouse, and the styles fall back to fonts that cover non-Latin names rather than turning them into boxes. Uploading takes a photo of a signature on paper and makes the white background transparent, so what lands on the page is ink rather than a grey rectangle.

Placement is on the rendered page rather than in a list of preset corners, because a signature has to land on a particular line, not just somewhere in the bottom-right. The box can be dragged or moved with arrow keys, and it maps back correctly on pages that were rotated — a scanned document that opens sideways is common, and a signature that ends up rotated ninety degrees is worse than no signature at all.

What we do not do is dress this up. The signature is drawn into the page content, so it travels with the file and opens the same way in every reader. It is also, for exactly the same reason, removable: anyone with a PDF editor can take it off again, and the document underneath is unchanged. That is true of every tool of this kind, including the ones that describe their output as secure. And if the file you bring already carries someone else's certificate signature, we stop and tell you before doing anything, because continuing would quietly destroy it.

What people sign here:

  • Rental agreements and lease renewals that arrive by email
  • School and clinic forms that need a parent or guardian
  • Quotes and work orders that need approving before a job starts
  • NDAs and letters of engagement for freelance work
  • Delivery notes and receipts signed from a phone
  • Anything you would otherwise print, sign, scan and send back

Signing on whatever you have in your hand

The work happens in the browser, so there is nothing to install and no account. Phones are a first-class case here rather than an afterthought.

§ 01

Android

Chrome, Firefox or Samsung Internet. Draw with a finger; the canvas will not scroll the page out from under you.

§ 02

iPhone and iPad

Safari or Chrome. An Apple Pencil on an iPad gives the closest thing to signing on paper.

§ 03

Windows

Chrome, Edge or Firefox. Draw with a mouse, a trackpad or a touchscreen, or type your name instead.

§ 04

macOS

Safari, Chrome or Firefox. The trackpad works for drawing, and typed signatures look better than most people expect.

§ 05

Chromebook

Works fully offline once the page has loaded, which suits a managed school device with no printer.

§ 06

Linux

Any modern browser. No packages, no Wine, no Acrobat.

The honest trade-off: privacy or an audit trail

Every signing service has to make one choice, and it determines everything else. We made the opposite choice from most of them, and it costs something real. Here is the whole picture rather than the flattering half.

What you get here

Your document is opened and signed by your own browser. It is never sent to a server, so there is no copy anywhere, nothing to be breached, nothing to delete later, and no account tying the document to your name. For a contract whose contents are the sensitive part, that is worth a great deal.

What you do not get

No audit trail. Because nothing reaches a server, nothing is recorded: no timestamp from an independent party, no IP address, no verified email behind the signature, no document history. If a dispute ever turns on proving who signed and when, none of that evidence exists — and evidence, not the picture of a signature, is what carries weight.

So which do you need?

For everyday agreements between people who are not going to end up in court over them — the rental form, the school letter, the quote — privacy is the better trade and this tool is the right shape. When the agreement is high-value, or when you may one day have to prove the circumstances of signing, use a service that records those circumstances. That is what DocuSign and its competitors are for, and it is why they ask for an account: the account is the audit trail.

Signedany editorSignature gone=
A signature drawn onto a page is page content — any editor can take it off, and the document underneath is unchanged.

And whichever you use, know this

A signature drawn onto a page can be removed from that page. It is page content, like any other image, and any PDF editor can delete it while leaving the rest of the document exactly as it was. No tool that stamps an image onto a PDF can prevent this, however it describes the result. A certificate signature is the thing that makes tampering detectable, which is the real difference between the two.

The document never leaves your device

The things people sign are almost by definition the things they would rather not hand to a stranger: contracts, offers of employment, medical consent, financial agreements. Uploading one to a service that requires an email address is a decision worth making deliberately rather than by habit.

Here there is nothing to decide. Your browser opens the PDF, draws your signature into the page and hands the result back to you. No request carries the file, nothing queues on a server, nothing is cached, and there is no copy for anyone to keep or to lose. Close the tab and it is gone.

It also means the usual gates are absent. No account, no email address, no page cap, no daily quota and no watermark — because none of it costs us anything to leave out. The one thing it does cost, as the section above says plainly, is the audit trail.

§ 01

No upload

The PDF is opened where it already is and never travels.

§ 02

No account

No sign-up, no email address, no watermark on the result.

§ 03

No record

Nothing is stored on our side — which also means no audit trail.

Questions about signing PDFs

How do I sign a PDF?
Drop the file in, make a signature by drawing it, typing your name or uploading a photo of your handwriting, then drag it onto the signature line and download the result. Nothing is installed and no account is needed. The whole thing happens in your browser, so the document is never uploaded.
How do I electronically sign a PDF?
That is exactly what this tool does. An electronic signature is any mark that shows you agreed to a document — a drawn signature, a typed name, or an image of your handwriting — placed on the page. Draw or type yours, put it where it belongs, and save. No printing, no scanning and no software.
What's the difference between an electronic signature and a digital signature?
An electronic signature is the mark itself, and it can be anything that shows intent. A digital signature is a cryptographic seal made with a certificate, calculated over the entire file, so that any later change to the document is detectable and the signer's identity is backed by whoever issued the certificate. This tool makes the first kind. If a form, a registry or a regulation specifically asks for a digital signature or a digital ID, you need software that holds your certificate.
Is a signature added this way legally binding?
Electronic signatures are recognised in most jurisdictions — the ESIGN Act and UETA in the United States, eIDAS in the European Union, and similar laws elsewhere — and for ordinary agreements they are routinely accepted. What we cannot tell you is whether that applies to your particular document, counterparty or country, because that depends on the agreement and sometimes on formalities that a specific law requires. If a dispute is plausible, note that what carries weight in one is evidence about the circumstances of signing, and this tool records none, by design.
Can someone remove the signature I added?
Yes. The signature is drawn into the page, like any other image, so any PDF editor can delete it and leave the rest of the document untouched. This is true of every tool that stamps a signature onto a page, whatever words it uses for its output. If you need a signature that makes tampering detectable, that is what a certificate-based digital signature is for.
What if the PDF is already signed by someone else?
We check for that before anything else, and stop if we find one. A certificate signature covers the whole file, so adding your signature would break it — and break it quietly: the file would still look signed while becoming impossible to verify. If that happens, ask the sender for an unsigned copy, or use a tool that signs with certificates and can add a second signature without invalidating the first.
Do you provide an audit trail?
No, and it is worth understanding why. An audit trail is a record kept by a service: a timestamp from an independent party, the IP address, a verified email, the history of the document. Keeping one requires the document and the signing event to pass through a server. Nothing here does, which is the point of the tool — and the reason we have nothing to record. If you need that evidence, you need a service that is built to collect it.
Do I need an account?
No. There is no sign-up, no email address, no free trial and no limit on how many documents you sign. Most signing services ask for an account because the account is what makes their audit trail meaningful; we do not have one to make meaningful.
Are my files uploaded?
No. The PDF is opened and signed by your own browser, and the signed file is assembled on your device. Nothing is sent to a server, so there is no copy anywhere for anyone to store, examine or delete. For documents like contracts and offers of employment, that is the whole point.
Can I sign a PDF on my phone?
Yes, and it is designed for that. Draw with your finger — the drawing area will not scroll the page out from under you — or type your name if drawing on glass is not going well. On an iPad an Apple Pencil gives the closest thing to signing on paper. Nothing is installed, so there is no app to find.
Can I add the date or my initials as well?
Place the signature, then make a second one for your initials or the date if you need them in a different spot — each placement is independent, so you can put several marks on the same page or on different pages. If you want the same signature on every page of a long agreement, there is a setting for that.
What if I need a certificate-based digital signature?
Then you need a certificate, which means either software that holds your digital ID or a service that issues one after verifying who you are. Adobe Acrobat supports them, as do national eID schemes in many countries and specialised providers for qualified signatures under eIDAS. A browser tool that never sees your private key cannot produce one, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.

Sign your PDF without printing it

Free, unlimited, no account, and processed entirely in your browser — with a straight answer about what an electronic signature can and cannot do.

Sign a PDF