Edit and sign contract PDFs in private

Before the signatures, a contract is a draft and editing it is completely normal. Fill in the blanks, correct a party's legal name, set the date, insert the agreed figure, fix the notice address.

After the signatures, editing the file is the wrong tool. Changing the text of a signed agreement and passing the new file on is at best confusing and at worst fraud, whatever the intention was. The standard fix is an amendment or an addendum: a short separate document that names the original agreement, states exactly what changes, and gets signed by everyone again. Keep the signed original untouched as the record. This is boring advice and it is the advice that keeps people out of trouble.

Some contracts carry a cryptographic signature: a certificate baked into the file, not a picture of someone's name. It covers the exact bytes of the document. Any edit at all changes those bytes, so the next person to open it sees a warning that the document has been altered since it was signed.

That is the mechanism doing its job, and no editor can get around it, ours included. If a certified document genuinely needs changing, it goes back to whoever certified it. A drawn or typed signature image carries no such protection, so a file signed that way edits like any other PDF.

This is where the editor earns its place. Click the clause and retype it. The document's own embedded fonts are pulled out and reused and the text colour is sampled off the page, so the amended line matches the rest and the contract does not arrive looking tampered with. Find and replace handles the changes that repeat: a company name that appears in the parties block, the signature page and four clauses is one pass instead of a page by page hunt.

When you want the other side to see what moved, do not just retype and send. Strike through what should come out, highlight what needs discussion, and use the text tool to put the proposed wording next to it. Every mark survives into the exported file, so they see your redline in any reader without needing the same software.

Silent edits get missed, then found three weeks later, and the conversation after that is worse than the one you avoided.

The Forms tool picks up real fields: text boxes, checkboxes, radio buttons and dropdowns. Plenty of contracts were printed to PDF with no fields at all, and there the Text tool does the job. Click the ruled line, type, drag the block until it sits on the rule. For signing, the Sign tool takes a drawn signature, a typed name in a handwriting style, or a photo of your paper signature, with a separate tab for initials because leases want those on every page. The signature is kept for the next document.

Signing it yourself is free and unlimited. When somebody else has to sign, the signature request tool sends them a link, lets them sign in their own browser with no account, and keeps an audit trail of who opened and signed and when. The free plan covers three requests a month. Pro raises that and allows up to ten signers on one document.

Sending a contract to an accountant, a broker or a counterparty's junior often means the pricing, the client names or somebody's address should not travel with it. Two tools, and only one of them actually removes anything.

Whiteout paints over content. It looks clean and the text is still in the file, so anyone can copy it back out. The redact tool genuinely removes it: each page you drew a box on is rebuilt with the boxed content gone, and there is nothing underneath to recover. The cost is that the rebuilt page becomes a flat image, so its other text stops being selectable. Redact last, after the editing and signing, and treat the redacted download as the copy you hand out. Court filings have leaked names for years by using a black rectangle instead.

An encrypted PDF cannot be read until the password comes off, so it will not open in the editor at all. Remove the password first, which needs you to know it, edit the plain copy, then put a new password on the finished file if it has to travel protected. Both steps run in the same browser.

On your own machine. The file is read into the browser tab and is not uploaded, there is no account, and nothing looks at what the document says. The one exception is the Share button, which is a deliberate click: it sends the finished PDF to our server so someone can open a link, and an anonymous share deletes itself after two hours. If you would rather nothing ever left the machine, email the download instead and never touch Share. Honest limit: files up to 50 MB, and 10 finished files a day on the free plan, resetting at midnight UTC.