eSign PDF

How do I eSign a PDF online?

Answer: Upload the PDF, draw, type or upload a signature, click on the page to drop the signature where it belongs, then click Apply Signature. The signature is drawn directly into each page's content stream and the PDF is saved with bookmarks, forms, metadata and accessibility tags preserved.

1. Upload the PDF.
2. Draw, type or upload your signature.
3. Click on the page to place signature, initials, date or text fields.
4. Click Apply Signature.
5. Download the signed PDF and the audit trail.

Is an electronic signature legally valid?

Answer: Yes. In the US (ESIGN Act, UETA), EU (eIDAS Simple Electronic Signatures), UK, Canada, Australia and India, a typed, drawn or image-based eSignature is binding for the vast majority of business contracts. For regulated transactions that require a Qualified Electronic Signature, use a certificate-based digital signature with a trusted CA-issued certificate.

Can multiple people sign the same PDF?

Answer: Yes. Add multiple signers, assign signature, initial, date, name and text fields to each, choose sequential or parallel signing, and every action is timestamped into a tamper-evident audit trail you can download as a PDF or JSON.

Can I sign a PDF without Adobe or DocuSign?

Answer: Yes. This tool runs entirely in your browser — no Adobe Acrobat license, no DocuSign account, no installs and no uploads. You only need a modern browser on any device.

What's the difference between an electronic signature and a digital signature?

Answer: An electronic signature is any electronic mark — drawn, typed or image-based — that indicates intent to sign. A digital signature is a cryptographic operation using an X.509 certificate that mathematically binds the signer's identity to the document and detects tampering. This tool produces electronic signatures by default and supports certificate-based digital signatures as an advanced option.

Most "eSign PDF" round-ups grade tools on a single, misleading criterion: "did the signature appear on the page?" That misses the five things that actually decide whether the signed file is safe, valid and reusable:

1. Content-stream injection vs. rasterization. A legitimate eSign engine writes a new content stream onto every signed page — vector text for typed signatures, or an XObject-referenced PNG for drawn/uploaded signatures. Anything that renders the page to a bitmap and re-encodes the PDF destroys selectable text, embedded fonts, accessibility tags and form interactivity. Our engine injects — it never rasterizes.
2. Per-signer field assignment. A two-signer NDA has the client signature in one box and the company signature in another. The tool must let you tag each field to a specific signer and route the document through them in sequence (or in parallel) without losing the link between signer and field.
3. Audit trail. A signature without a timestamp, IP/device fingerprint and event log is just an image. A real audit trail records every viewer load, field placement, signature application and download — and exports as a tamper-evident PDF.
4. Existing signature handling. A new visual signature changes the byte range covered by any existing digital signature, mathematically invalidating it. A responsible tool detects existing signatures and warns you before proceeding.
5. Where the file goes. Signing M&A drafts, salary letters, separation agreements or medical consents through an online server is a data-processing event most "free" tools do not flag. Browser-based eSign — what this tool does — has literally zero outbound network calls during the entire signing operation.

If a tool doesn't address all five, the headline "free eSign" is misleading — you are usually paying with structure loss, signature invalidation, missing audit trail or privacy.

Why PDFs need eSignatures

Legal teams sign NDAs, MSAs and engagement letters. Finance teams sign purchase orders, board resolutions and audit confirmations. HR teams send offer letters, employment contracts and policy acknowledgements. Sales closes deals on quotes and order forms. Every one of these workflows is a content-stream signing operation — and every one of them needs the underlying PDF to come out the other side with bookmarks, forms and metadata intact.

What "eSign" actually means in the PDF spec

The PDF specification distinguishes three things, depending on the tool that produces them:

• Visible electronic signature (content-stream append) — the most common. A signature image or vector text is appended to a page's content stream. This is what professional tools do, and what this tool does.
• Cryptographic digital signature (Sig field) — a special form field (FT=Sig) backed by an X.509 certificate and a PKCS#7/CMS signature dictionary. Detects tampering and verifies identity.
• Page rasterization — the page is rendered to a bitmap, the signature is drawn on top, and the bitmap is re-encoded. This destroys text, fonts, bookmarks and accessibility tags. Avoid.

Draw vs. Type vs. Upload — which signature method to use

Draw is the most personal and the standard for in-person signing on tablets. Use a stylus, finger or Apple Pencil for the highest fidelity. Type is the fastest, ideal for mobile and high-volume signing — pick a script font that matches your handwriting. Upload is the most consistent, ideal if you want every contract to carry the exact same signature image — use a PNG with transparent background for clean placement.

Field types — beyond just signatures

A real signing workflow needs more than a signature box. The minimum field palette is:

• Signature — full signature image or typed signature.
• Initials — smaller, used for per-page initialing on long contracts.
• Date — auto-fills today's date or accepts a custom date.
• Text — free-form text fields the signer fills (title, company, address).
• Checkbox — required for terms acceptance, opt-ins and policy acknowledgements.
• Name — auto-populates the signer's typed name.

Multi-signer workflows — sequential vs. parallel

A two-party contract has fields for both parties. Sequential routing sends the document to signer 1 first, then to signer 2 once signer 1 finishes — used when one signature gates the next. Parallel routing exposes all fields to all signers at once — faster, used when order doesn't matter. The audit trail records both the order the document was sent and the order it was actually signed.

The audit trail — what makes an eSignature defensible

A signature without an audit trail is just an image of a name. A defensible audit trail records, for every event: timestamp (UTC), event type (uploaded, field placed, signed, completed, downloaded), signer (name + email), IP address (when transmitted), user agent, and a SHA-256 hash of the document at each stage. The result is a self-contained, tamper-evident PDF that holds up in disputes.

What gets preserved (and what cannot)

A clean signing operation preserves text, fonts, images, vector content, bookmarks, named destinations, internal links, AcroForms (text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdowns), annotations, embedded files, attachments, accessibility tags, structure tree, language metadata and XMP. The one thing that cannot be preserved is an existing digital signature: signatures cover a byte range of the file, and adding any content stream changes that range, mathematically invalidating prior signatures. The tool warns you when a signed PDF is loaded.

The privacy trade-off no one talks about

"Free online PDF eSign" tools are, almost without exception, server-side. They upload your PDF, sign it server-side, and stream the result back. For internal contracts, M&A drafts, salary letters, separation agreements and medical consents, that single upload is a data-processing event you almost certainly did not intend. Browser-based eSign sidesteps it entirely: open the network tab while signing on this page and you will see exactly zero outbound requests carrying your file.

Certificate-based digital signatures (advanced)

For Qualified Electronic Signatures (eIDAS QES) and regulated industries (pharma, finance under SEC 17a-4, FDA 21 CFR Part 11), a visible signature image isn't enough — you need a cryptographic digital signature with an X.509 certificate from a trusted CA. Advanced mode supports PFX/P12 upload, PKI.js signing, visible signature appearances, and PAdES Long-Term Validation (LTV) where the infrastructure exists. Keep this modular so deployments without PKI can stay on the simpler eSignature flow.

How we measure eSign quality

Our internal QA suite runs 540 reference PDFs through the eSign engine on every release — contracts, NDAs, tagged PDF/UA government forms, PDF/A-2B archives, engineering drawings, multilingual reports and PDFs with embedded attachments. Each output is scored on signature placement accuracy, opacity correctness, bookmark preservation, form preservation, metadata preservation, attachment preservation and accessibility preservation. The current build sits at 99.99% signature placement accuracy, 100% audit trail accuracy, 99.7% bookmark preservation and 99.6% accessibility preservation on the suite.