Add page numbers to a PDF — without uploading

Page numbers are usually the last thing missing before a document goes out — a contract assembled from several sources, a report exported without them, a scanned bundle that needs numbering for a court filing or a tender submission. It is a small formatting job, and it does not warrant uploading the whole document to a website.

The numbers are drawn onto the pages by code running in your browser. Nothing is transmitted — this site is static files with no backend, and a Content-Security-Policy blocks third-party requests. You can load the page, go offline, and still number a document.

Numbers can go in any corner or centred, at the top or the bottom of the page. Bottom-centre is the conventional choice for reports and manuscripts; bottom-right suits documents that will be printed single-sided and flicked through; top-right is common in legal and technical filings.

Three numbering styles are available: a plain number, Page N, and N of total. The last is worth choosing for anything printed or posted, because it tells the reader immediately whether a page is missing from the stack — which is exactly why contracts and submissions use it.

You can also set the starting number to something other than 1. That solves the common cases where a document has an unnumbered cover or title page, or where this file is one section of a larger bundle and needs to continue the sequence from where the previous section ended.

Numbering is generally the last step in assembling a document, which means the pages should already be in their final order. Combine the sources with Merge PDF, fix any sideways scans and drop unwanted pages with Rotate and reorder pages, and number the result — every stage on your own device.

Before sending it on, two things are worth a moment: strip the metadata, since PDFs carry the author name and the software that produced them, and compress it if it needs to clear an email attachment limit.