Adobe Fill and Sign is free. Three other Adobe products with almost the same name are not

Drop your document here and sign it now. PDF, Word and Excel all work: a .docx or .xlsx is laid out in your browser exactly as it was written, so there is nothing to convert first. Add a signature, a date, a company stamp or a watermark, then download it sealed. Free to start, no account, and the file is never uploaded to do it.

Adobe sells at least four things with the word signature attached and gives them names a customer cannot tell apart. One of them is free forever, one is a $20 a month subscription, one is an enterprise product with per transaction pricing, and one is a feature inside the other three. People end up on a paywall not because they wanted the expensive thing but because they could not tell which door they had walked through. Here is the map.

Adobe Fill and Sign: free, local, and the one most people want

Inside the free Adobe Acrobat Reader there is a tool called Fill and Sign. It places text anywhere on a page, and it lets you add a signature by drawing it, typing it or importing an image. It does not care whether the PDF has form fields. It costs nothing, it runs on your own computer so the file goes nowhere, and there is no daily limit.

For the overwhelming majority of "I need to sign an Adobe PDF" situations, this is the answer and you already have it installed. Adobe Acrobat Fill and Sign free is not a trial, it is a permanent part of the free reader.

The one thing to do before sending: what you place is an annotation by default. Use Save As, or print to PDF, so the marks are drawn into the page. Otherwise the recipient may open it in a viewer that does not render annotations and receive what looks like a blank form.

Adobe Acrobat Sign: the subscription, formerly EchoSign

This is the product that competes with DocuSign. You send a document to other people, it tracks who has signed, and it produces an audit report. It was EchoSign, then Adobe e-signature branding, then Adobe Sign, then Adobe Acrobat Sign, which is why old links and old internal processes use four different names for the same thing.

Pricing sits with Acrobat: Acrobat Standard around $13 a month and Acrobat Pro around $20 a month on an annual commitment, both including a limited number of sends, with Acrobat Sign Solutions quoted separately for higher volumes and per transaction pricing above the allowance. There is no free tier here beyond a trial. If you searched Adobe Sign PDF free and landed on a card form, this is the product you found.

The Adobe Sign download people look for does not exist as a separate program. On a computer it is a website plus the Acrobat you already have, and the only things you install are the reader and optional Office add-ins.

Adobe Acrobat Pro: the editor, not the signer

Around $20 a month. What it adds over the free reader is editing the page, converting formats, OCR, redaction, comparing versions, and the ability to apply a certificate based Adobe digital signature. That last one matters if a regulator or a government process requires a cryptographic signature bound to a certificate rather than a drawn mark.

What it does not add is the ability to place a signature on a page, because the free reader already does that. This is the single most common unnecessary purchase in the category: people buy Acrobat Pro to sign, when the free product signs.

The Adobe Acrobat online sign tool

There is also a browser version at Adobe's site, which will accept a file and let you place an Adobe PDF signature without installing anything. It is convenient and it works. Two things to be aware of: the file is uploaded to Adobe rather than staying on your machine, and the free web tools are metered, so after a couple of documents you will meet a sign in prompt and then a plan.

If the reason you are in the browser is that you are on somebody else's computer or a phone, that is a good reason. If you are at your own desk with Acrobat Reader installed, the local Fill and Sign is faster, private and unmetered.

What none of the free Adobe paths give you

A record. The free Adobe signature is a mark on a page, and nothing about the file says who made it, when, or from where. Adobe Acrobat Sign does produce an audit report, which is one of the reasons it costs money.

Verification by the recipient. Even with the audit report, the record lives in the sender's account. The person holding the file cannot check it independently without being given access.

The file back in its original format. Upload a Word document to any of these and you get a PDF. If your contracts live in Word and your counterparties expect Word, that conversion is a daily annoyance and a layout risk.

When to use us instead, said plainly

Use the free Adobe Fill and Sign when the document is low stakes, you are on your own computer, and nobody will ever ask you to prove anything about it. It is free, it is private, and paying for that would be silly.

Use us when somebody else has to accept the document. Every download here is flattened, carries a certificate naming the signer and the time, and gets a public verification page the recipient opens without an account. Word comes back as Word and Excel comes back as Excel. It is $1.50 for the completed download with no subscription, or $5 a month personal and $15 a month business, flat for the account rather than $20 per person per month.

The arithmetic is the argument. A two person team on Acrobat Pro is about $480 a year. The same team here on the business plan is $180, and if you only sign a handful of documents it is under $20. Drop a file into the panel at the top of this page and compare the two results side by side before you renew anything.

Questions people ask about this

Is Adobe Fill and Sign free?

Yes, permanently. It is part of the free Adobe Acrobat Reader, it places text and signatures on any PDF whether or not it has form fields, it runs locally so nothing is uploaded, and it has no document limit. Remember to flatten via Save As before sending.

Is Adobe Acrobat signature free or paid?

Placing a signature is free in Acrobat Reader. Sending documents to other people for signature is Adobe Acrobat Sign, which is paid, and applying a certificate based Adobe digital signature needs Acrobat Pro at around $20 a month.

What happened to EchoSign?

It became Adobe eSign, then Adobe Sign, then Adobe Acrobat Sign. Same product lineage, four names, which is why searches for all of them still land on the same place.

Is there an Adobe Sign download for Windows or Mac?

No separate program. You install Adobe Acrobat Reader for free, or Acrobat Standard or Pro if you subscribe, and the sending side runs in the browser. Optional Word and Outlook add-ins are the only other installs.

Do I need Acrobat Pro to sign a PDF?

No, and this is the most common unnecessary purchase in the category. The free Acrobat Reader signs PDFs. Pro is for editing pages, converting formats, OCR, redaction and certificate based signatures.

What is a cheaper alternative to Acrobat Pro for signing?

If signing rather than editing is the job, a per document tool costs far less: $1.50 for a completed download here, against about $240 a year per person for Pro. You also get a flattened file, an audit certificate and a public verification link, which Pro does not provide.

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What PDF Verified is, and what it is not

PDF Verified is a tool for preparing, signing, stamping and checking documents. It is not a law firm, a compliance service or a forensic examiner, and nothing here is legal, financial or compliance advice. Requirements differ by country, by document type and by the party asking, so check what applies to your document before you rely on it, and take advice where the document matters. You are responsible for the documents you create, sign and send, and for having the authority to do so: signing or stamping in somebody else name, or as an organisation you do not represent, is forgery whatever tool is used. To the extent the law allows, we accept no liability for how a document made with this tool is used or relied on. The full position is in our terms of service.

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