How to Sign a PDF Online for Free

Printing a document, signing it, and scanning it back in is still how a lot of people sign PDFs — mostly because it's not always clear what the online alternatives actually do under the hood. There are two genuinely different things people mean by "sign a PDF," and it's worth knowing which one you're getting.

Two different things called "signing"

A simple signature is an image — drawn with a mouse or finger, typed in a script font, or a photo of your handwritten signature — placed onto the page. It looks like a signature, and for most everyday documents (an internal form, a low-stakes agreement) that's genuinely sufficient.

A digital signature is different: it embeds a cryptographic signature into the PDF file itself, tied to a certificate. The visible mark can look identical, but the file itself now carries proof of who signed it and whether it's been altered since. If someone edits so much as a character after signing, that's detectable.

How to sign a PDF

1. Open the Sign PDF tool and upload your document.
2. Draw, type, or upload an image of your signature, and place it where it belongs on the page.
3. Choose a simple signature or a digital (cryptographic) signature.
4. Download the signed PDF.

Which one should you use?

For everyday internal documents, a simple signature is fine — it's what most people mean when they say "e-sign." For anything where you might later need to prove the document wasn't tampered with after signing, use the digital signature option instead. Legal requirements for electronic signatures vary by country and document type — in the EU they're set out in the eIDAS regulation, so check the rules that apply to you before relying on either type for anything high-stakes.

What this doesn't do yet

Signing a document yourself is different from sending a document to someone else to collect their signature. That workflow — routing a document to one or more people and tracking their signatures — isn't available yet. Today's tool covers signing a document you already have in front of you. If you only need to type a name or date into a form, Edit PDF is the better fit.