About Sign PDF
Sign PDF places a handwritten-looking signature on a page as an image — it is a visual signature, not a cryptographic one, and the tool card says so on screen. Draw with a mouse, finger or stylus on the 480 by 160 signature pad, or type your name and have it rendered in the Caveat cursive typeface. The mark is exported as a transparent PNG and embedded on the page you choose, where you can drag it into position, nudge it with the arrow keys and scale it between 10% and 70% of the page width. Use it to return a signed delivery note, a school permission slip, a rental agreement or an internal approval. Also searched as sign a PDF online, add a signature to a PDF, or e-sign a PDF.
Sign PDF specs
| Price | Free ($0) — no paid tier |
|---|---|
| Account | Not required |
| Watermark | None |
| Where it runs | In your browser, on your device |
| File upload | No file is uploaded |
| Input | PDF (1 file); the signature is drawn or typed in the page |
| Output | |
| File size limit | Limited only by your device's memory |
| Works offline after the page loads | Yes |
How to use Sign PDF
Add the document
Drop one PDF on the upload area. The tool reads its page count and the displayed shape of every page, rotated ones included, so placement stays accurate on landscape and quarter-turned pages.
Choose Draw or Type
The Draw chip gives you a signature pad you write on with a pointer, finger or stylus. The Type chip takes your name, up to 64 characters, and renders it in the Caveat cursive font, shrinking it to fit the pad.
Pick the page and position it
Use the pager under Signature placement to reach the right page, then drag the signature on the preview. If you would rather not drag, focus it and use the arrow keys: one percent per press, ten percent with Shift held.
Set the size
The Signature size slider runs from 10% to 70% of the page width and shows the current value. Height follows from the pad's proportions, and placement is re-clamped so the signature can never hang off the page.
Download signed PDF
Press the button to save a copy with a -signed suffix. One signature is placed per download — run the tool again on the result to add another.
Frequently asked questions about Sign PDF
Is this a real digital signature?
No — Sign PDF produces a visual signature, not a cryptographic one. What it embeds is a picture of your handwriting placed on the page, exactly as if you had scanned a signed sheet and pasted it in. A cryptographic digital signature is a completely different construct — it uses a private key from a certificate issued to you, hashes a byte range of the document, stores the result in a dedicated signature dictionary, and lets any reader verify afterwards that the file has not changed by a single byte since. This tool does none of that. It has no certificate, no timestamp and no verifiable chain of custody, and the note under the preview states plainly that this is a visual signature only.
Is a drawn or typed signature legally binding?
Whether a drawn or typed signature is legally binding depends on your jurisdiction and on what is being signed, and this page cannot answer it for you. Many legal systems recognise electronic signatures broadly for everyday agreements, which is why signed-and-scanned PDFs are accepted routinely; equally, plenty of specific document types — property transfers, wills, certain employment and financial instruments — require a qualified or certified signature backed by verified identity. A visual mark carries no identity verification, no timestamp and no audit trail, so it proves nothing about who applied it. If the agreement matters, ask the counterparty what they will accept and use a certified e-signature service where one is required. Where a visual signature is accepted, keeping the email or message thread that carried it is usually what supplies the missing context.
Can someone remove or move my signature afterwards?
Yes — anyone with a full PDF editor can select, move, delete or copy the signature, because it is an embedded PNG drawn onto the page rather than anything bound to the document. Two follow-up steps raise the bar without pretending to make it tamper-proof: Flatten PDF merges the image into the page's own content stream so it is no longer a separate object to grab, and Add password to PDF encrypts the file and asks compliant viewers to refuse modification. Neither is equivalent to a cryptographic signature, which also does not prevent tampering but does make tampering detectable — the property a visual signature fundamentally lacks. Sending the signed file as a flattened, encrypted copy is the most this chain of tools can honestly offer.
Can I sign more than one page, or add a date next to my name?
One signature is placed per download, so signing several pages means running the tool again on each result: drop the signed file back in, pick the next page and repeat. Your drawing has to be redone each time, because nothing is stored between sessions. There is no date field either — this tool embeds the signature image and nothing else. To add a typed date, initials or a received-on line, use Add header & footer or Annotate PDF first and sign afterwards. If you need the same block in a fixed spot on every page of a long document, adding it as a footer is by far the quicker route.
My signature looks wrong — how do I get a better one?
Drawing quality depends mostly on the pointer you use. A finger on a phone or a stylus on a tablet produces a far more natural line than a mouse, because the pad captures pointer movement and smooths it with curves rather than snapping to straight segments; if a mouse is all you have, sign slowly in one continuous motion and use Clear to start over as often as you need. Typed signatures shrink automatically to fit the pad, so a very long name renders small — for those, Draw usually looks better. Whichever you pick, the size slider matters: around 30% of page width reads as deliberate, 70% reads as a stamp.
Is it free, and does my signature get uploaded?
Sign PDF is free with no account and no watermark, and neither the document nor your signature is transmitted anywhere. The strokes you draw stay in a canvas inside the page, the PNG is generated in the browser, and pdf-lib embeds it into the document locally before the result is written to your downloads. Nothing is kept between visits either, which is a genuine trade-off: you get the privacy of a tool that holds no signature on file, and the inconvenience of drawing it again next time. For a document carrying personal details, that is usually the trade you want to make. The PDF is read from disk with the browser's File API and the signed copy is written straight back to your downloads folder.
Why in-browser processing matters
Every PDFChamp tool runs inside this page: the file you choose is read by JavaScript in your own browser and is never sent to a server, so nothing is uploaded, queued, or stored anywhere. That removes the upload wait, the processing queue, and the question of what happens to your file afterwards — the about page compares this architecture with server-side PDF tools.
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