Sejda is free three times an hour. Here is what to do on the fourth

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.

If you want to edit a PDF, Sejda is one of the few free tools that changes the actual text rather than pasting a box over it, and it is the reason so many people search for it by name. It is also bounded in three directions at once, and the limit you hit first depends entirely on what you are doing. Here is where each one sits, why the hourly one exists, and what the cheapest sensible move is once you meet it.

The three limits, in the order people hit them

Three tasks per hour. This is the one people meet first and understand least. It is a rolling window, not a daily reset, so if you edit a PDF, then compress it, then split it, you are done for the hour. Each operation counts, including the ones you did by accident.

Two hundred pages, and fifty megabytes. These bite on scanned documents, because a scan of a forty page contract can easily be over fifty megabytes on its own. If a file is rejected on upload rather than on the third try, this is why.

The paid tier removes all three for roughly $5 to $10 a month depending on billing, or a week pass for a few dollars, which is the option almost nobody notices and is the right one if you have a single afternoon of work to get through.

Why the Sejda PDF editor free tier is bounded that way

Because real editing is expensive to run. Reflowing text inside a PDF means rebuilding the page, and doing it on a two hundred page document takes real server time. The tools that offer unlimited free editing are almost always not editing: they are drawing a white box over the old text and putting new text on top, which looks fine on screen and falls apart when the document is searched, copied from, or opened in a different viewer.

So the honest framing is that the Sejda PDF editor free online is a sample of a genuinely expensive operation, and three an hour is generous rather than stingy. It is not a trick.

What to do when you hit it

If the job is really editing, pay them. To edit a PDF Sejda is among the best tools available at any price, the week pass exists, and forty minutes of fighting a free alternative is worth more than the fee. This is the case where the answer is genuinely a competitor and it would be dishonest to say otherwise.

If the job is not editing, do not spend a Sejda task on it. Most of what people use it for is not editing at all: filling in a form, adding a signature, adding a date, stamping a page, merging two files. Those are separate jobs and there is no reason for them to consume an editing allowance.

That is the split worth internalising. Sejda edits PDFs. Signing, filling, stamping and verifying are a different tool, and using an editor for them is what puts you at the hourly limit before lunch.

The jobs that do not need an editor at all

Adding your name to a contract. That is a signature, not an edit, and the file should come back flattened with a record of who signed and when. Sejda will sign a PDF, and what it produces is a mark on a page with no certificate behind it.

Filling in a form that has no fields. Place text and flatten. No page rebuilding required.

Adding a company stamp or an approval mark. Same again, and if the stamp carries a date you want it to be a real date rather than a picture of one.

Checking whether a document you received has been altered. That is not an edit either, and it is the one job where using an editor is actively the wrong move, because opening a suspect file in an editor and re-saving it destroys the evidence you were trying to look at.

What we do, and what it costs

Sign, fill, stamp and verify, in the browser, with no hourly limit while you work and no account required to start. The completed download is $1.50, or $5 a month for a personal plan and $15 a month for a business plan, flat for the account rather than per user.

What comes out is flattened, so nothing you placed can be dragged off the page by whoever opens it next. It carries a certificate naming the signer and the time. It gets a public verification page the recipient can open without an account. And a Word file comes back as a Word file rather than as a PDF you did not ask for, which is the thing every PDF toolbox gets wrong.

Use both. Sejda for editing, this for everything that happens to a document after it is final. That combination costs about $5 in a busy month and removes the hourly wall from the half of the work that never needed an editor.

Questions people ask about this

What is the Sejda free limit?

Three tasks per hour on a rolling window, documents up to 200 pages, and files up to 50MB. Each operation counts as a task, including compressing or splitting, so three quick actions use the hour up. Paid removes all three, and there is a short week pass as well as a monthly plan.

Is the Sejda PDF editor really free?

Yes, within those limits, and it genuinely edits text rather than covering it. That is why the limits exist: rebuilding a page is expensive to run, and tools offering unlimited free editing are usually drawing a white box over the old text instead.

What is the best free alternative for editing a PDF?

For real text editing there are few good free ones, which is why Sejda is worth paying for when editing is the actual job. LibreOffice Draw will open simple PDFs and is free. If the job is filling, signing or stamping rather than editing, you do not need an editor at all.

Can I sign a PDF in Sejda?

Yes, it places a signature on the page. What you do not get is a certificate, a timestamp, or a way for the recipient to verify the document independently, so it suits low stakes documents rather than anything you might need to prove.

Should I open a suspicious document in a PDF editor?

No. Opening and re-saving a file in an editor rewrites its structure and destroys the metadata that would have shown whether it was altered. Check it in a verification tool first, then decide.

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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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