Add a Text Watermark to a PDF

Stamp a word such as CONFIDENTIAL or DRAFT across every page of a PDF, with your own opacity, size, angle and colour. The file is processed in your browser and never uploaded.

Runs in your browserFree, no sign-upLast reviewed October 8, 2026

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Quick answers

How do I add a text watermark to a PDF for free?: Choose the PDF, type the text, adjust opacity, font size, rotation and colour, and download the new file. There is no account, no page limit and no added branding. The main limits are a 40 MB file size, an unencrypted file and a single line of text.
Can I watermark a PDF without uploading it?: Yes. This tool opens the PDF with JavaScript in your browser, draws the text and builds the new file on your device. The document is not sent to a server, which matters for contracts, payslips and other private papers.
What opacity should a PDF watermark be?: Between 15 and 30% suits most documents: the stamp is obvious but the text under it stays readable. Use 10 to 15% for a subtle mark on dense pages and 40% or more only when the stamp matters more than the content. The default here is 25%.
Does the watermark go on every page?: Yes. The same text is drawn on every page of the PDF, including the cover. There is no page range option. To leave some pages clean, split them off first, watermark the rest and merge the parts back together.
Can a PDF watermark be removed?: This tool cannot remove one, and the stamp is part of the page content, so it survives printing and shows in every PDF reader. A person with a PDF editor can still delete it. Treat a watermark as a label and a deterrent, not as security.
Can I add a logo or image watermark?: Not with this tool. It stamps text only, in bold Helvetica. A company name typed as text works; a logo file does not.

How Watermark PDF works

Choose a PDF, type the wording, and the tool draws that text once on every page in bold Helvetica, then gives you a new file named after the original with -watermarked added. The defaults are CONFIDENTIAL in red at 25% opacity, 48 pt and a 45 degree angle. Opacity is held between 5 and 100%, and the size and rotation fields are set up for 12 to 120 pt and -90 to 90 degrees. The mark is drawn over the existing content, so it shows on scanned pages as well as text pages. It is text only: there is no logo or image watermark, and every page gets the same stamp.

Largest font size that fits common watermark words

Text that is too wide for the page is cut off at the edge, not shrunk or wrapped. This chart shows how wide each word is at the default 48 pt and the largest size, up to the 120 pt top of the Font size field, that keeps the whole word inside a portrait page.

Watermark text	Width at 48 pt	A4 at 45 degrees	A4 at 0 degrees	US Letter at 45 degrees	US Letter at 0 degrees
PAID	110 pt	120 pt	120 pt	120 pt	120 pt
VOID	115 pt	120 pt	120 pt	120 pt	120 pt
COPY	136 pt	120 pt	120 pt	120 pt	120 pt
DRAFT	163 pt	120 pt	120 pt	120 pt	120 pt
SAMPLE	200 pt	114 pt	120 pt	114 pt	120 pt
APPROVED	266 pt	90 pt	107 pt	89 pt	110 pt
DO NOT COPY	334 pt	74 pt	85 pt	72 pt	87 pt
CONFIDENTIAL	357 pt	70 pt	79 pt	68 pt	82 pt
FOR REVIEW ONLY	445 pt	57 pt	64 pt	56 pt	66 pt
INTERNAL USE ONLY	496 pt	52 pt	57 pt	50 pt	59 pt

Widths are measured in bold Helvetica, the font the tool uses. A4 is 595 by 842 pt and US Letter is 612 by 792 pt (72 pt to the inch). The sizes are the geometric limit with the text touching the page edge, so go a few points smaller for a margin. Landscape pages allow less at 45 degrees: CONFIDENTIAL tops out at 51 pt on landscape A4.

Where the watermark lands on the page

The stamp is anchored at the vertical middle of each page. The tool measures the width of your text, starts it so that a level line would be centred left to right, and places its baseline at half the page height. Rotation then turns the text around that starting point, not around the centre of the word.

In practice that means a 0 degree watermark sits centred across the middle of the page. A positive angle swings the text anticlockwise, so at 45 degrees it begins left of centre at mid-height and climbs towards the top right corner, covering the upper half of the page. A negative angle does the opposite: at -45 degrees it runs from the middle down towards the bottom right. At 90 degrees it reads straight up the page, starting from the middle.

Position is worked out per page, so a file that mixes A4, Letter and landscape pages gets a stamp placed for each page's own size. There is no control for moving the watermark to a corner, repeating it in a tiled pattern or putting it behind the content. On scanned pages that carry a built-in rotation flag, the angle is applied relative to the page's stored orientation, so check the result and adjust the rotation if the stamp leans the wrong way.

Watermark settings for common jobs

Each setup below uses only the fields on this page and stays inside an A4 or US Letter portrait page.

Confidential stamp on an internal report

Watermark text CONFIDENTIAL, Opacity 25, Font size 48, Rotation 45, Colour red (#ff0000)

The default look: a red diagonal word 357 pt long, rising from the middle of the page towards the top right, with the report text readable through it.

You can raise the size to 68 pt before the word reaches the edge of a Letter page.

Draft mark on a proposal sent for review

Watermark text DRAFT, Opacity 15, Font size 120, Rotation 45, Colour grey (#808080)

A large pale grey DRAFT, 407 pt long, that is hard to miss but does not compete with the body text or with comments reviewers add.

Sample pages sent to a prospect

Watermark text SAMPLE, Opacity 35, Font size 96, Rotation 45, Colour blue (#1d4ed8)

A 400 pt blue stamp across the upper half of each page. The higher opacity makes a clean screenshot of the content less useful.

Level stamp across the middle of an invoice

Watermark text PAID, Opacity 30, Font size 120, Rotation 0, Colour green (#15803d)

A horizontal PAID, 275 pt wide, centred left to right on the middle line of the page.

What each watermark setting does

Field	Range	Default	Effect
PDF file	One PDF, up to 40 MB	None	The document to stamp. Encrypted or damaged files are rejected.
Watermark text	One line of Latin text	CONFIDENTIAL	The wording drawn on every page. Required.
Opacity (%)	5 to 100	25	How solid the text is. 100 hides whatever is directly under the letters.
Font size	12 to 120 pt	48	Height of the lettering in points. Text wider than the page is cut off.
Rotation (degrees)	-90 to 90	45	Positive values tilt the text up to the right, negative values down to the right, 0 is level.
Colour	Colour picker or a six-digit hex code	Red (#ff0000)	Fill colour of the letters.

The font is always bold Helvetica. It is one of the standard PDF fonts, so it is not embedded and adds almost nothing to the file. Opacity typed outside 5 to 100 is pulled back into that range. Font size and rotation are not checked in the same way: a number typed outside the listed range is applied as typed, and an empty field falls back to its default.

Limits to know before you stamp a file

Text only. There is no image or logo watermark.
One line. The text field holds a single line, and long phrases are not wrapped onto a second one.
Western characters only. Accented letters such as É and Ô and symbols such as the copyright sign work. Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Cyrillic, emoji and some Central European letters such as Ł are not supported and stop the tool with an encoding error.
All pages or nothing. You cannot pick a page range or skip the cover.
One PDF at a time, up to 40 MB.
Password-protected PDFs are not accepted. Remove the password in a PDF reader first.
The stamp is permanent in the new file. Your original is not changed, so keep it as the clean copy.

What a text watermark does and does not protect

A watermark tells the reader something about the document: that it is a draft, that it is confidential, who it belongs to, or who it was sent to. It travels with every page, shows in every PDF reader and comes out on paper when the file is printed. That makes it good at preventing honest mistakes, such as a draft being filed as the final version, and at discouraging casual copying.

It is not encryption and it does not stop anyone opening, copying or printing the file. The stamp is drawn as ordinary page text on top of the existing content, which also means the word is selectable and searchable, and a determined person with PDF editing software can delete it. If the content itself must stay private, protect the file with a password or share it through a system that controls access, and use the watermark as the visible label on top.

One practical use is tracing leaks: stamp each recipient's name or company on their copy, one file per recipient, so that a copy that turns up elsewhere shows where it came from.

How to get your result

1
Click PDF file and choose the document. It must be an unencrypted PDF of 40 MB or less.
2
Type the wording in Watermark text. Keep it to one short line, such as CONFIDENTIAL, DRAFT or SAMPLE.
3
Set Opacity (%) between 5 and 100. Lower numbers make the stamp fainter so the page stays readable.
4
Set Font size in points (12 to 120) and Rotation (degrees) from -90 to 90. Use 0 for a level stamp and 45 for a diagonal one.
5
Pick a Colour, check the preview and download the result. The Pages watermarked figure confirms how many pages were stamped.

Common questions

Does the watermark cover up the text on the page?

It is drawn on top of the page, but at the default 25% opacity the content underneath stays readable. Only at or near 100% do the letters fully hide what is under them. Because the stamp sits above the content, it also stays visible on scanned pages, where a watermark placed behind the content would be hidden by the scan image.

Will watermarking make my PDF file much bigger?

The stamp itself adds very little, because it is one short line of text per page in a standard font that is not embedded. In a test with small text-only files, a one-page PDF grew from about 0.9 KB to 1.3 KB and a three-page PDF from 1.3 KB to 2.2 KB. The tool re-saves the whole document, so the size of a large file can shift slightly either way. The new size is shown as File size under the result.

Why does my watermark run off the edge of the page?

The text is wider than the space available at that font size and angle. The tool does not shrink or wrap it. Lower the font size or shorten the wording: CONFIDENTIAL fits a portrait A4 page up to 70 pt at 45 degrees and 79 pt at 0 degrees, while longer phrases such as INTERNAL USE ONLY need about 52 pt or less.

Why is my diagonal watermark not in the exact centre of the page?

Rotation turns the text around its starting point at mid-height, not around the middle of the word. At 45 degrees the stamp therefore climbs from the middle into the upper half of the page. For a stamp that is centred exactly, use 0 degrees. For one in the lower half, use a negative angle such as -45.

Can I watermark a password-protected PDF?

No. An encrypted file is rejected with a message that it could not be read. Open it in a PDF reader, enter the password, save or print an unprotected copy, and stamp that copy.

Can I put two different watermarks on one PDF?

Yes, by running the file through twice. Stamp it once, then choose the downloaded file as the input and stamp it again with different text, angle or colour. For example, DRAFT at 45 degrees and a company name at 0 degrees. Each pass adds -watermarked to the file name.

Does it work on scanned PDFs and PDFs with mixed page sizes?

Yes. The stamp is drawn over whatever is on the page, including a full-page scan, and its position is calculated separately for each page from that page's width and height, so portrait and landscape pages in one file are each handled on their own terms.

What is the difference between a watermark and a stamp in a PDF?

In everyday use they mean the same thing: a word such as DRAFT or APPROVED laid over the page. Some PDF software uses stamp for a movable annotation that sits on top of the page and watermark for content fixed into it. This tool writes the text into the page content itself, so it behaves like the fixed kind.