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, type, or upload your signature.
3. Position and resize it on the page.
4. Optionally add a date or printed name, then export.

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 electronic signature. It is not a certificate-based digital signature, and it does not verify identity or cryptographically seal the document.

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.

The distinction matters in one practical direction. Because a digital signature certifies that nothing has changed, any later edit breaks it: rotating, merging, adding a page number, cropping. If a document arrives already carrying one, this site warns you before an operation that would invalidate it. An electronic signature has no such property; it is page content, and it survives whatever you do next.

Which one you need is set by whoever is asking for the document, not by the file. Most contracts, forms, permission slips, and internal approvals want the first. Regulated filings and some legal instruments require the second, and no browser tool produces those — you would need a certificate from a trust service provider. The full comparison sets out which is which and when each is required.

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.

Whichever you are placing, sign last. Every edit made after signing sits on top of a document that was supposed to be final, and on a digitally signed file it breaks the seal outright.