Add a Watermark to PDF — Free
Stamp text like DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL, or your company name diagonally across every page of a PDF. Set the opacity, apply it to the whole document, and download — all in your browser, nothing uploaded.
In short: drop a PDF, type the watermark or choose a logo, pick where it goes, and the preview shows the real stamped page before you download. It runs on your device, so nothing is uploaded, and it works in any script the fonts cover — not just English.
- Is it free?
- Yes. No account, no task limit, and nothing of ours is added to your file.
- Can I use a logo instead of text?
- Yes. Switch to Image and choose a PNG, JPG, WebP or GIF; a PNG keeps its transparency.
- Can the watermark go behind the text?
- Yes. Layer → Below the content draws it first, so the page text sits on top of it.
- Does it work with Arabic, Urdu, Hindi or Chinese?
- Yes. The stamp is drawn with embedded fonts for Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic script, Devanagari and Chinese, and right-to-left text runs right to left.
- Can I watermark only some pages?
- Yes. Pages under More options takes a range like 1-3, 7.
- Is a watermark a security feature?
- No. It marks a document; it does not lock it. Anyone with a PDF editor can remove it.
How to Watermark a PDF
Drop the PDF onto the tool, or click to choose it.
Type the watermark, or switch to Image and pick a logo.
Pick a position or Tiled, the angle and the opacity; the preview updates.
Click Add Watermark, then download the stamped PDF.
Features
Any language
Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Urdu, Devanagari and Chinese.
Text or logo
Type a stamp or choose a PNG, JPG, WebP or GIF.
9 positions or tiled
Placed as the page is displayed, rotated scans included.
Opacity and angle
5–100% opacity; diagonal, 0°, 45° or 90°.
Chosen pages
Stamp every page or a range like 1-3, 7.
Real preview
The preview is the stamped page itself.
Where the stamp lands, on every kind of page
Positions are measured on the page as you see it. That sounds obvious and is the usual failure: a scanned page is often stored sideways with a “rotate 90°” flag, and a tool that places the stamp in the stored coordinates puts “bottom right” on the left edge, running up the page. The previous version of this tool lost the stamp on such pages entirely. The placement now goes through each page’s crop box and rotation, so a landscape page, an A4 page and a rotated scan in one file all get the stamp in the same visual spot.
Diagonal is not a fixed 45°: it follows the corner-to-corner line of that page, and Fit the page sizes the text to that diagonal. A tall page and a wide page therefore both get a stamp that spans them.
Watermarks in any language
PDF’s built-in fonts only cover Western European characters, which is why so many watermark tools fail — or print boxes — on مسودہ, Черновик or 机密. This page embeds real fonts instead: a subset holding only the characters you typed, so the file grows by a few kilobytes, not megabytes.
Arabic-script text is shaped and runs right to left; a mixed stamp like “مسودہ DRAFT” keeps each part in its own direction. Characters outside the covered scripts (Hebrew, Korean and Thai among them) are not drawn yet.
Above or below the content
Above the content is the default and the safe choice for a stamp that must be seen, such as DRAFT or COPY. Below the content puts the mark under the text, which reads better at a higher opacity — but a page that has a solid white background painted as a shape will hide it. The preview shows which you have.
None of this protects the document. The stamp is ordinary page content, and anyone with an editor can delete it. If you need to stop copying or editing, add a password with Protect PDF after watermarking.
Capabilities at a glance
What this tool does and does not do, stated plainly. The “No” rows are the point, not an omission.
| Capability | Supported | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | ||
| Text watermark | Yes | Up to 60 characters, bold and italic optional. |
| Image or logo watermark | Yes | PNG, JPG, WebP or GIF. PNG transparency is kept. |
| Non-Latin text | Yes | Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Urdu, Persian, Devanagari, Chinese. The old version refused all of these. |
| Position | Yes | Nine spots — corners, edges, centre — or tiled across the page. |
| Angle | Yes | Diagonal (corner to corner on that page), 0°, 45° or 90°. |
| Opacity | Yes | Any value from 5% to 100%. iLovePDF offers four fixed steps. |
| Above or below the content | Yes | Below draws the stamp first, so text stays readable on top. |
| Chosen pages only | Yes | A range such as 1-3, 7. |
| Live preview of the real page | Yes | The preview IS the stamped page, rendered — it cannot disagree with the download. |
| Removing an existing watermark | No | This adds one. Removing another tool’s stamp is a different job. |
| Protection against removal | No | A watermark marks a document; use Protect PDF to restrict it. |
| Input | ||
| Mixed page sizes and orientations | Yes | Each page is placed as a viewer shows it, including rotated pages. |
| A PDF with a permissions password | Yes | Opened automatically; the output is an ordinary PDF. |
| A PDF with an open password | Yes | The page asks for it. The password never leaves your device. |
| Task or page limit | No | Sejda’s free tier allows 3 tasks an hour and 200 pages. |
| Output | ||
| Original text stays selectable | Yes | The page is not flattened or re-rendered. |
| Links and form fields kept | Yes | The stamp is added to the existing pages, not copied into a new file. |
| Watermark text is real text | Yes | Searchable and copyable, as in the original. |
| How it runs | ||
| Nothing is uploaded | Yes | The document never leaves your device. |
| Signup | No | There is no account. |
| Offline use | No | The page, pdf-lib and the fonts load from the network first. |