Add a watermark to a PDF

Mark a PDF as confidential, a draft or a copy with see-through text over its pages.

Privacy: runs in your browser

This tool processes your input in this browser. Inputs and results are excluded from analytics. Recent tools save tool names, visit counts and last-visit times. Favorites store only tool names. Draft saving is optional and stays on this device; delete saved text with the draft controls. Loading text from a URL is optional and contacts that server; its URL and your IP address are visible to the server. When a button sends your result to another tool, it waits in this tab until that tool opens it, for up to a minute, and is then deleted.

Copy link includes the inputs you choose to share in the address. Anyone with that link can reopen them. Files and generated results are excluded. Password and key tools share settings only.

Or drop it here. It is read on this device and never uploaded.

No PDF chosen yet.

Leave empty for every page, or write them like 1, 3-5.

Your PDF

The marked file appears here.

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Sharing and starting over

A copied link includes what you entered and your settings, so anyone with it can see them. Leave private text out. Files and results are not included; random draws are made again.

Start over puts the tool back to its starting values and closes any open file or device. Drafts you saved stay on this device until you delete them.

How to add a watermark to a PDF

Type the text, then choose where it goes (diagonal from corner to corner, straight across the middle or repeated over the whole page), its size, its color and how strongly it shows. Leave the pages box empty to mark every page, or type or tap the pages to mark.

Your browser draws the text, so any language and script works, and it is laid over each page as one see-through picture; a page stored sideways gets it the way you see the page. Text under the watermark can still be read and selected, and the rest of the page is copied as it is. A picture of the first marked page shows the result before you save it.

Next: Add page numbers to PDF

Worked example

A 12-page contract marked DRAFT, diagonal, medium size, gray at 30%, shows the word from corner to corner on every page, and the contract's own text stays readable under it.

Before you rely on the result

One PDF of up to 200 MB at a time, with up to 60 characters of text. The watermark is a picture, so it cannot be searched as text, and it is a visible mark rather than protection: PDF editors can remove it. A PDF locked with a password has to be unlocked first. Nothing is uploaded.

Next: Image watermark

Cite this page

ToolOctopus. “Add a watermark to a PDF.” Updated 2026-10-12. https://tooloctopus.com/add-watermark-to-pdf.

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