Sign PDF Online

When to use Sign PDF

Use this when you need to add your signature to a form, letter, or agreement without printing, signing by hand, and rescanning it. It is not a substitute for a certificate-based digital signature workflow — see the FAQ below if you need that instead.

How to Sign a PDF

1. Select a PDF.
2. Draw or type a signature and select Use this signature, or upload a PNG image.
3. Enter width, height, X, and Y, then click Place signature on current page.
4. Export and reopen to check placement. Add dates or printed names in a separate Add Text workflow.

What this tool changes

• Adds a visible signature image and, optionally, a date or printed name to the pages you choose.

What it preserves

• All existing page content underneath the signature.

Good to know

• This adds a visible image, not a certificate signature or identity verification.
• Use PNG uploads: the picker lists JPEG too, but the current export path embeds PNG bytes. Reopen the download to inspect placement.

What kind of signature this produces

This places a visible signature — a picture of your name on the page. It looks like a signature, it prints like one, and it is what almost every "sign a PDF" tool produces.

It is not a cryptographic digital signature: a mathematical seal, made with a certificate issued to you after an identity check, that proves who signed and proves the document has not changed by a byte since. That requires a certificate authority, which no browser tool can provide.

For the overwhelming majority of everyday documents the visible kind is what is being asked for. If a requirement uses the words qualified, advanced, or certificate-based, it is not — see electronic signature vs digital signature.

Draw, type, or upload

Draw on a touchscreen with a finger or stylus and you get something close to your handwriting. Draw with a mouse and you get something that looks like it was drawn with a mouse — the most common reason people redo this step.

Type gives a clean, consistent result that reads as a rendered name rather than handwriting. For internal approvals and routine forms that is completely fine and often more legible.

Upload gives the best result if you have a good image, and it is worth setting up once if you sign regularly. Sign a blank white sheet with a black pen, photograph it in daylight, crop tight to the ink, and save it. That file will beat anything you draw with a trackpad on every document thereafter.

Sizing, placing, and signing last

The commonest mistake is far too large. A real signature occupies roughly the height of two or three lines of body text and sits on the line, slightly overlapping it, often straying past its right end. If yours is taller than the paragraph above it, it reads as a graphic.

An uploaded photograph usually carries a grey rectangle of background with it, which is glaringly obvious over white paper. Crop tight to the ink; if it persists, retake the photo on a whiter sheet in better light rather than fighting it.

Sign at the end of the workflow. Assemble, order, number, check — then sign. Any operation after signing rebuilds the document, and while a visible signature survives that as page content, a document altered after signing is a document signed for a version that no longer exists. Dates and initials are text rather than signatures: Add Text to PDF handles those.

Two different things are called signing, and this is the first

A signature you draw, type, or upload is an electronic signature: a mark placed on the page showing intent to agree. It is what almost every everyday document asks for, and it is what this tool produces. A digital signature is a different mechanism entirely — a certificate-based cryptographic seal that proves the file has not been altered since it was signed.

This tool rebuilds the output and cannot preserve an original certificate signature over it. The Sign panel can warn when it detects a signature field, but detection is not a complete validation check and should not replace inspection in a capable reader.

Confirm the recipient's required signing method. This site places images; it does not implement certificate signing. Other browser-based signing services can use different architectures, so evaluate their identity and privacy processes separately.

A signature lands where you put it on the page you are looking at. Turned pages used to be the exception — a signature dropped into the bottom-right of a page carrying a quarter turn arrived in a different corner, because the position was read against the stored sheet rather than the preview. It is read against the preview now, at every quarter turn, and the signature is drawn upright with the page rather than on its side.

Finish edits before the final signature workflow. A signature-aware application may allow certain incremental changes to a digitally signed PDF, but this site's rebuilding export is not that workflow.