pdfsigna is a native app for macOS and Windows that reads PDFs fast and signs them properly — a visual signature when that's all you need, a real cryptographic signature when it matters. One payment. No account. Nothing uploaded anywhere.
Services agreement
Digitally signed · 4 September 2026
Before you sign
With a certificate, your visual signature is wrapped as the appearance of a real PAdES signature field: it stops being the legal mechanism and becomes decoration on top of something that actually holds up.
There is nothing to download and nothing to buy on this page, and there won't be until the app does what this page says it does. macOS is being built first and Windows follows. Everything below describes what pdfsigna is being built to be, and the section what isn't ready lists what it can't do yet — including the parts we would rather you knew about before you ever paid us anything.
Not a marketing claim — every item below is publicly documented.
Free, built in, and quietly dangerous.
It draws a visual signature and nothing more: no certificates, no timestamps, no company stamps. Worse, saving a PDF that someone else already signed does an append save that ignores the document's permissions, and the file comes back looking unsigned. It can't sign with your certificate, and it breaks other people's signatures.
€18.30 a month for Standard, billed annually.
Forced sign-in on a free reader, an AI assistant sold as a separate add-on while the basics stay behind a paywall, and users reporting that it "crashes and freezes when scrolling through a 20-page document". You should not need a Pro licence to rotate a page.
Good app, broken promise.
Readdle removed features from customers who had already paid for them — the reviews say it plainly: "After having paid this money… they have removed features!!" Its "Lifetime" tier also warns that new features may cost extra. And its signing flow is type-draw-or-insert-an-image: a visual signature, not a cryptographic one.
€108 to €684 a year, per user.
Those tools exist to route a document to other people and collect their signatures. That's a real problem, and it isn't this one. To sign your own documents you do not need a subscription, an envelope quota, or a copy of your contracts sitting on someone else's servers.
Most PDF apps call everything "a signature". We don't, because the two things behave differently the day someone disputes the document.
Your handwriting, captured from the trackpad, a photo, your phone or an imported image, placed on the page. Free, unlimited, no certificate involved.
In the United States that is usually enough. Under the federal ESIGN Act and the state-level UETA, what makes an electronic signature enforceable is intent to sign, consent to transact electronically, a signature logically associated with the record, and a record that can be retained and reproduced. pdfsigna keeps that association intact and never rewrites the file behind your back. Courts still weigh the evidence, so for anything high-value, sign with a certificate.
A real cryptographic signature built with your certificate — from the system
keychain or certificate store, a .p12 file or a PIV smart card —
embedded in the PDF as PAdES. It detects any change made after signing, identifies
you, and survives being emailed around.
Stated precisely: pdfsigna produces advanced electronic signatures under Article 26 of the eIDAS Regulation, in PAdES format as defined by ETSI EN 319 142. When you have a certificate, your visual signature is wrapped as the appearance of that real signature field — the drawing becomes decoration on top of something that actually holds up.
Services agreement
Services agreement marked.pdf Place, move and resize it with the keyboard too.
The EU grades electronic signatures, and the grade depends on your certificate and on where its private key lives. Before you sign, pdfsigna reads the QCStatements in your certificate, checks them against the European trusted list, and tells you exactly which rung you are about to land on. Always a symbol and a label, never colour alone, and never hidden in a menu.
A qualified certificate whose key sits in a qualified signature creation device: a national ID card, a smart card, or remote signing by a qualified trust service provider.
"Legally equivalent to a handwritten signature across the EU."
A software certificate from a qualified provider, held in your system keychain. The most common case in Spain.
"Accepted by the Spanish public administration. Not equivalent to a handwritten signature."
A certificate that is not qualified — your own, or one issued by your company.
"Detects tampering and identifies the signer, but with no qualified provider behind it."
Your handwriting placed on the page, with no certificate behind it. The default in the free tier — and the level most US agreements are signed at.
"Not an advanced signature. Limited evidentiary weight."
Integrity or certificate chain verification failed.
"This document was modified after it was signed."
Those five levels describe the European framework. US practice under ESIGN and UETA is far more forgiving — but a document signed in the US that later has to be produced to a European counterparty, bank or public body is judged by the ladder above, and knowing that in advance is the whole point.
Coming soon
Drop in a signed PDF and find out whether the signature holds: who signed it, at which level, whether their certificate was valid at the time, and whether anything changed afterwards.
It will run entirely inside your browser, using the same signing engine as the app compiled to WebAssembly. Your document isn't uploaded to a server, because there is no server to upload it to.
Free forever, no usage limit, no account. It isn't a product — it's how you find out we exist.
Not available yet. It depends on compiling the signing core to WebAssembly, and it ships when it agrees with the app, not before.
The drop area for your signed PDF will live here.
Feature under construction, not yet working.
Nothing here is rounded in our favour or lifted from an inflated list price. Where a vendor only publishes in one currency, we quote that currency instead of inventing a conversion.
Our own figure is the price we intend to charge, not a price you can pay today. Nothing is on sale yet. We are publishing it anyway, because what a thing will cost is exactly what you want to know before you spend any time on it — and because a plan you can hold us to is worth more than a blank space.
Competitor checkout prices verified in September 2026, not struck-through list prices. Ours is a plan.
| Product | Model | Verified price | Per year | Signs with a certificate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pdfsigna Pro | Perpetual licence — planned, not on sale | €39, paid once | — | Yes, PAdES |
| Adobe Acrobat Standard | Subscription | €18.30/month, VAT included, annual plan | €219.60 | Yes |
| Adobe Acrobat Pro | Subscription | €24.19/month list · €12.09/month promotional | €290.28 | Yes |
| PDF Expert | Subscription and perpetual | $49.99/yr Essential · $79.99/yr Pro · $139.99 Lifetime · €149.99 on the Spanish App Store | From $49.99 | Not documented |
| DocuSign | SaaS, envelope quotas | €9/month Personal · €23/user/month Standard · €38/month Business Pro | €108 to €456 | Yes, in the cloud |
| Signaturit | SaaS, per user | €35/user/month Business · €57/month Business+ | €420 to €684 | Yes, advanced and qualified |
Against Acrobat Standard, a Pro licence would pay for itself in two months. Against DocuSign and Signaturit the argument isn't price at all: those are workflow platforms for collecting other people's signatures. If you are signing your own documents, you are renting infrastructure you don't need.
€0
Forever€39
One payment, perpetual licence€19
Per year, entirely optional€29
Per licence, five or more, paid onceThese four are the intended shape of the offer, not a checkout. They can still change before release, and if they do, this page changes with them.
This industry advertises "up to 91% off" against a list price nobody has ever paid. One price, no countdown timer, no pre-ticked upsell in the checkout.
Plus is a subscription because qualified timestamps genuinely cost money every time one is issued. Nothing else here is billed monthly.
A Pro licence covers the whole major version and its updates; the next major version is half price. We do not remove things you already bought.
This is a pre-launch page. We would rather tell you what's missing than let you find out after paying.
Neither version has shipped. macOS is in development and Windows comes after it. There is no download, no purchase and no release date on this page, because we would rather have none than have one we miss.
Smart card support beyond standard PIV is not promised for version 1.
The Spanish national ID card is not a standard PIV card, it depends on the vendor's
own module, and it has a bad history on Apple Silicon. The system keychain and
.p12 files cover the common case. We'll announce card support when it
genuinely works.
PAdES B-LT and B-LTA are not implemented in the engine yet. The goal is long-term validation by default, with revocation material embedded so a document keeps verifying after the certificate expires. It isn't there today, and it won't be listed as a feature until it is.
The online validator isn't live. It needs the signing core compiled to WebAssembly, and it ships when it produces the same verdict as the desktop app.
iPhone, iPad and Android come after the desktop. Genuinely native on each, or not at all. If a platform can't be done natively, that platform waits — we are not going to wrap a web view in a title bar and call it an app.
No PDF app does this well. In pdfsigna you can place, move and resize a visual signature using only the keyboard or a screen reader; text scales to the system maximum without any panel truncating; every piece of text clears 4.5:1 contrast; and the five levels above are validated in light mode, dark mode and increased contrast. Never colour alone — always a symbol and a label.
This page holds itself to the same standard: a skip link, visible focus, a real heading hierarchy, a comparison table you can scroll with the keyboard, and not one line of JavaScript.