Sign a PDF Online, Free

For many everyday transactions, yes. The federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act says that a signature, contract or other record relating to a transaction in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce may not be denied legal effect, validity or enforceability solely because it is in electronic form (15 U.S.C. § 7001(a)(1)). State laws based on the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act address electronic signatures at the state level.

There are limits. Some documents are excluded (see the next question), the federal law does not require anyone to agree to accept electronic records or signatures (15 U.S.C. § 7001(b)(2)), and the other party, your contract or lease, and your state may have their own requirements. This is general information, not legal advice.

An electronic signature is a mark you add electronically to show that you intend to sign: a drawn, typed or uploaded signature image like the one this tool creates. A digital signature is a cryptographic technique: a certificate issued to a person or organization is used to sign the file so software can verify who signed it and whether it changed afterwards.

This tool produces an electronic signature image placed into the PDF. It does not add a certificate, a timestamp or an audit trail.

The federal rule in 15 U.S.C. § 7001 does not apply to, among others: wills, codicils and testamentary trusts; adoption, divorce and other family-law matters; court orders, notices and official court documents; notices of cancellation of utility services; notices of default, acceleration, repossession, foreclosure or eviction, or of the right to cure, under a credit agreement secured by, or a rental agreement for, a primary residence; notices cancelling health or life insurance; product recall notices; and documents that must accompany hazardous materials (15 U.S.C. § 7003).

Also avoid it where a document must be notarized or witnessed, where the recipient requires a handwritten signature or paper delivery, or where a lease or contract says how notices must be signed and delivered.

No. The tool runs in a sandboxed frame whose security policy blocks every network connection. Your PDF is read, displayed and rewritten by code running in your browser; the download is created there too. Closing the tab discards the file and the signature. You can confirm this in your browser’s developer tools: the network panel shows no request carrying your document.

Not directly: this tool signs PDF files. In Word, choose File, then Save As or Export, and pick PDF; in Google Docs, choose File, Download, PDF. Then add the PDF here.

If the document must stay editable in Word, use the Signature maker tab instead: it gives you a transparent PNG you can insert as a picture and drag onto the signature line.

Yes. On the Review step of any letter editor on this site there is an "Add your signature (optional)" section. Draw or type a signature and it appears above the signature line in the preview and in the PDF and Word downloads. Like everything else in the editor it is kept in memory only and is cleared when you start over or leave the page.

Yes. Drawn and typed signatures are saved as PNG files with a transparent background, so they sit on the page without a white box. For an uploaded photo or scan, the "Remove white background" option makes light pixels transparent; it works best with dark ink on clean white paper.

A copy of your file with the signature images and any date or name text drawn into the page content, like printed ink. The rest of the file is left as it was. No certificate, audit trail, account information or data about you is added, and the signature cannot be lifted out as a separate layer by a PDF viewer.