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Sign a PDF

Draw or type your signature, place it on the page, and download the signed PDF. No account, and your signature never leaves your device.

Private · on device. Runs in your browser: your file is not uploaded. No sign-up.

The PDF you want to sign

What this kind of signature is

Worth being clear about, since the marketing around e-signing rarely is.

It is

  • • An image of your signature placed onto the page, which is what the great majority of everyday e-signing amounts to
  • • Accepted for most routine business and personal documents in jurisdictions with e-signature legislation
  • • Recorded with a SHA-256 fingerprint, so anyone can later confirm the document has not been altered since
  • • Visually identical to signing a printout and scanning it, without the loss of quality that involves

It is not

  • • A digital certificate, nothing here cryptographically binds the signature to your identity
  • • Proof of who signed: the fingerprint shows the document is unchanged, not who applied the mark
  • • A hosted audit trail recording IP address and access times, because nothing is sent anywhere
  • • Sufficient where a specific form of signature is required by law, such as many wills, deeds and notarised documents
Your signature never leaves this device. The drawing, the document and the finished file are all handled in this browser tab, no account, no upload, no copy kept. For a signature that is a stronger argument than convenience: an image of your handwriting is worth having control of.

Print, sign, scan, and what replaced it

The old routine was absurd and everyone did it anyway: print a document, sign it with a pen, scan it back in, and send a file several times larger and considerably harder to read than the one you started with. Half the scanned signatures in circulation are crooked, grey, and photographed on a kitchen table.

Placing the signature directly on the page skips all of it. The document stays a proper PDF, the text stays selectable, and the file stays small.

What you are actually creating

This is worth understanding rather than assuming, because the marketing in this space is vague on purpose.

A signature added here is an image placed on the page. It carries the same evidentiary weight as signing a printout and scanning it, which, for the overwhelming majority of documents people sign, is exactly what is expected and entirely sufficient.

What it is not is a digital signature in the cryptographic sense. A certified signature binds your identity to the document mathematically, so any later change to the file is detectable. That is a different thing, it requires a certificate authority, and no browser tool can produce one.

The distinction matters in one situation: when someone might later dispute that you signed, or dispute what you signed. For a supplier form, a school letter, a rental reference or a routine agreement, an image is the norm. For a document where you can foresee a dispute, use a service that provides an audit trail.

Why doing this in the browser matters here specifically

Free signing services generally ask you to create an account, then to draw your signature. Consider what that second step collects.

An image of your handwritten signature is a reusable credential. Unlike a password it cannot be changed, and it is the thing that appears on your bank mandates, your tenancy agreement and your passport application. Handing a clean, high-contrast copy to a free web service in exchange for signing one form is a poor trade, and it is rarely presented as a trade at all.

Here the drawing never leaves the page you drew it on. Neither does the document, which is its own argument, since the documents people sign are contracts, offers and agreements.

Getting a signature that looks right

Use a phone if you have one. A finger on glass beats a mouse comfortably, and a stylus beats both. You can open this page on a phone, sign, and email yourself the result.

Sign larger than feels natural. A signature drawn small and scaled up looks shaky. Fill the box; it is scaled down to fit the page.

Or type it. A typed name in an italic face is honest about being typed, and looks considerably better than a poor drawing. It is also kept as real text rather than an image, so it stays sharp at any zoom and can be selected.

Place it against the line, not on it. Click just above the signature line on the preview. Sitting slightly above reads as natural; sitting on top of the rule reads as pasted.

The thing free signing tools leave out

Every free signer, including this one, puts an image on a page. So none of them can tell you whether the document was altered after it was signed. That is the real weakness, and it is usually solved by paying a service to hold an audit trail on its servers.

There is a third option that needs no server, and nobody offers it free: a fingerprint. A SHA-256 of the finished file is 64 characters that change completely if a single character of the document changes. Keep it with the document, and anyone can recompute it from the file they hold and confirm it is byte-identical to what was signed.

This tool shows you that fingerprint when you sign, and can append a record page carrying the fingerprint of the document as it was signed. The verify tool does the checking, on any file, in the browser.

Be clear about what it establishes: the document is unchanged. Not who signed it, that needs a certificate authority, and a certificate authority needs infrastructure this site deliberately does not have. Half the problem, solved honestly, is better than the whole problem ignored.

Before you send it on

If the signed document is going outside your organisation, the metadata remover will strip the author name, software and timestamps that travel invisibly with every PDF. And if it needs to meet an upload limit, the compressor will bring it down while keeping the text selectable, see also the email size checker, because attachments are about a third larger in transit than they are on your disk.

Frequently asked questions

Is a signature added this way legally binding?

For most everyday documents in countries with e-signature legislation, the US E-Sign Act and UETA, the EU eIDAS regulation, the UK Electronic Communications Act, an electronic signature showing clear intent to sign is generally valid, and an image of your signature placed on the page is what the great majority of e-signing amounts to in practice. But this is not a digital certificate: nothing here cryptographically binds the signature to the document, so later changes to the file are not detectable, and there is no audit trail. Where a specific form of signature is required by law, many wills, deeds and notarised documents, this will not suffice. If the document matters, ask the other party what they require.

How is this different from DocuSign or Adobe Sign?

Those services create an audit trail: who signed, when, from which address, with the document hashed so tampering is detectable. That is genuinely valuable for contracts of consequence, and it requires a server, which is why they all need an account. This tool does the simpler thing, it puts your signature on the page, for the far more common case of a form, a letter or a routine agreement where you would otherwise print, sign and scan.

Is my signature uploaded?

No. The drawing, the document and the finished file are all handled in this browser tab. Worth caring about: an image of your handwritten signature is a reusable credential, and free signing services that ask you to draw one are collecting exactly that. Yours stays on your device, and you can verify it by watching the Network tab.

Can I draw with a mouse?

Yes, though it will look like a mouse signature. A phone or tablet is considerably better, since you can use a finger or a stylus. If neither produces something you are happy with, the typed option sets your name in an italic face, which is honest about what it is and looks tidier than a bad drawing.

Can I sign more than one page?

Yes. Pick what you want to place, signature, initials, today's date, or free text, then click the page. Change page and place more. Everything is applied in one pass, so a contract needing initials on every page and a signature at the end is a single operation.

What is the fingerprint for?

It is the answer to the honest weakness of every free signing tool. A signature image proves nothing about whether the document was altered afterwards. The fingerprint is a SHA-256 of the finished file: change one character of the document and it changes completely. Keep it alongside the document, and anyone can drop the file into the verify tool and confirm it is byte-identical to what you signed. It proves the document is unchanged, it does not prove who signed, and the tool says so.

The PDF will not open, it asks for a password.

Open it in your PDF reader with the password and save an unencrypted copy, then sign that. A signature cannot be added to a document that cannot be opened.