PDF Page Numberer

About this tool

Add page numbers to any PDF

Add page numbers to any PDF — position, format, starting number, skip pages. 100% in your browser.

RT-IMG-013 · Image & File

Drop a PDF here or click to choose Adds page numbers at the position and format you pick

No PDF loaded yet.

Position

Format preset

Start number

Skip first N pages

Font size (pt)

Margin (pt)

💡 Skip first N pages is useful when your PDF has a cover sheet and a table of contents that shouldn't be numbered. Start number controls what number page 1 of the numbered range gets.

Drop a PDF to begin.

🔒 PDFs stay on your device. Numbering happens entirely in your browser using the self-hosted pdf-lib library. Nothing is uploaded — verify in DevTools → Network.

How to add page numbers

Add your PDF

Drag your file onto the dropzone or click to choose. The tool shows the page count once loaded.

Pick a position

The 3×3 grid corresponds to where on each page the number lands. Bottom-center is the standard for most documents; top-right is common for legal briefs; bottom-right is common for tabbed binders.

Choose a format

Presets cover the common cases — plain number, fraction-of-total ("1 / 10"), "Page 1 of 10", and so on. For anything else, pick Custom… and use {n} for the current page and {total} for the total. Example: Document A — page {n}.

Set start number and skip if needed

Start number defaults to 1. Skip first N pages defaults to 0 — bump it up if your PDF starts with a cover or TOC that shouldn't be numbered. The starting number applies to the FIRST numbered page, not the first physical page.

Click Add page numbers and download

pdf-lib draws the text on each page at the calculated position and saves the result as {original}-numbered.pdf. The page rotation is respected — numbers land correctly even on rotated pages.

PDF page numbering — text drawn on top, not text replaced

Adding page numbers to a PDF is a different operation from editing the document's text. The PDF format stores existing page content as a sequence of drawing operators (place this font, draw this string at this position); adding a page number is appending more drawing operators to that sequence. The existing content isn't touched. The output PDF is the input PDF plus one extra text drawing per page — meaning the file size barely changes, and any existing text remains 100% intact and selectable in your reader.

Why this matters for legal and audit documents

In legal, audit, and compliance workflows, the integrity of the source document is paramount. A tool that "edits" a PDF to add page numbers — by re-rendering pages, re-flowing text, or modifying existing content streams — produces a file that's no longer the original. Forensic tools can detect the difference. This tool draws over the page rather than modifying it: the original drawing operators are unchanged, an additional drawing operator is appended for each page number. From a document-integrity standpoint, that's the correct behaviour.

Page numbers should be drawn ON the document, not edited INTO the document. Every reputable PDF tool does it the additive way — only the cheapest pretend-tools re-render the page.

The APAC use case

Page numbering is one of the most common document operations in Singapore's legal sector (court bundles, statutes of agreed evidence), Malaysia's government workflows (Suruhanjaya Pencegahan Rasuah submissions, audit reports), Indonesia's academic ecosystem (thesis bundles and journal submissions require sequential pagination), and Vietnam's and Philippines' BPO industries (client deliverables require pagination for receipt acknowledgement). The skip-first-N feature in particular is heavily used in academic contexts where cover pages and abstracts are not numbered.

What this tool does — and what it doesn't yet

This tool adds simple text-based page numbers at one of 9 positions, with format presets and a custom template, starting from any number, with optional skip-first-N. What it does not do yet: alternate odd/even page positions (inside-margin pagination for bound documents), Roman numerals for front-matter, automatic font-matching to existing document fonts, or color customisation. Those are on the roadmap. For now, if you need elaborate alternating-page pagination, a desktop tool like PDF Annotator or Acrobat is the right choice — for the 90% case of "add bottom-center numbers to this 50-page document", this tool is faster, more private, and free.

10 Things to Know About PDF Page Numbers

PDF page numbers are drawn as text on top of the existing page — the source content is untouched. The output is the input plus one text-drawing operation per page.

The "physical page" (sheet 5 of 10) and "logical page" (Section A, page 3) can differ. Skip-first-N lets you handle that — the numbering starts after the skipped pages.

The PDF spec has a separate concept called Page Labels that lets a reader display alternative labels (e.g., "iii, iv, 1, 2") in the page navigator. This tool adds visible numbers; Page Labels are a separate (and complementary) feature.

Helvetica is one of the 14 "standard" PDF fonts — every PDF reader can render it without embedding the font in the file. That's why our numbers are essentially free: a few bytes per page.

If a page already has a rotation flag (90°, 180°, 270°), our tool reads that rotation and draws the number in the VISIBLE orientation, not the raw page orientation. The number lands where you expect.

The standard "bottom-center" page number position uses a 24pt margin (about 8mm) from the bottom edge. That's the default Word, Pages, and Google Docs use too.

Some PDF readers (older iOS Books versions) draw the rotation rotation of a page wrong. If your numbers look misaligned in one reader but correct in others, the bug is in the reader, not the file.

Custom format templates support {n} (current page) and {total} (total of NUMBERED pages, not physical pages). That's why "Page {n} of {total}" with 2 skipped pages on a 10-page doc says "Page 1 of 8" through "Page 8 of 8".

Adding page numbers to a 1,000-page PDF takes about 2 seconds in this tool. The pdf-lib drawing API is highly optimised — drawing 1,000 single-line strings is a trivial workload.

The output PDF size is the input plus roughly 50 bytes per numbered page — totally negligible compared to even a single embedded image.

FAQ

No. The pdf-lib library runs in your browser. Your PDF is read into memory, drawn on, and saved straight back to your downloads folder. Open DevTools → Network and watch — zero outbound traffic.
Yes — set "Skip first N pages" to 1. The cover page is left untouched and page 2 of the document becomes "page 1" in the numbering (or whatever you set Start number to). Set to 2 for cover + TOC, etc.
Use {n} for the current page number and {total} for the total numbered pages. Example: Page {n} of {total} produces "Page 1 of 10" through "Page 10 of 10". You can include any other text: App. A — {n} produces "App. A — 1", "App. A — 2", and so on.
Not yet — this version uses Helvetica (a built-in PDF standard font). Custom font embedding is on the roadmap. For most documents Helvetica is the safe choice since it's universally supported and doesn't add to the file size.
Yes. The tool reads each page's rotation and draws the number in the VISIBLE orientation. A landscape-rotated page gets its "bottom-center" number at the bottom of the visible page, not on the rotated logical bottom.
Restriction-only protection (no-print, no-edit) is bypassed via pdf-lib's ignoreEncryption flag. Open-password protection is not — remove the password in Adobe Acrobat or Preview first, then add page numbers here.
Yes. The page numbers are drawn as real PDF text, not as images — they're selectable, searchable, and copyable. The original document content is untouched. Existing text remains selectable as before.
Not yet — the format template uses Arabic numerals only. The common academic pattern of Roman front-matter then Arabic body matter is on the roadmap. For now, the workaround is to split the PDF into front and body, number each separately, and merge them back.
They are drawn on top of whatever's at that position. If the bottom margin of your document is already used (existing footer, watermark), the page number may overlap. Bump the margin value up — try 36 or 48pt — to push the number further from the edge into clearer space.
Yes on iOS Safari and Chrome on Android. The position grid wraps to a 3×3 touch target. Numbering 100 pages on a phone takes about 1 second — pdf-lib is fast.