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In development · macOS and Windows · built in Europe

Preview can't sign. Acrobat wants a subscription. Here's the third option.

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.

See what it looks like How signing works

Neither version has shipped yet. macOS is being built first and Windows follows. Nothing to download, nothing to buy — here's what isn't ready.

  • Your certificate never leaves your machine. No servers, no document uploads, no telemetry on your files.
  • No sign-up, no email, no "sign in to continue" — in any version, ever.
  • We don't take back features you already paid for.
What it looks like

You can't run it yet. You can see it.

Both of these are things the app does today, drawn from the code and not from a wishlist. No window chrome: this runs on macOS and on Windows, and neither one gets to look like the other's.

Placing a visual signature

Your handwriting on the page, with handles and alignment guides — and it works from the keyboard too. With no certificate behind it the level is Simple, and the file that comes out says marked, never signed.

Signed with your certificate

The same handwriting, this time wrapped as the appearance of a real PAdES signature field. Before you sign, the panel tells you which level you are about to land on; afterwards, the status band says which one you got — and it can't be collapsed or hidden.
How it works

Two ways to sign, and we never blur them

Most PDF apps call everything "a signature". We don't, because the two things behave differently the day someone disputes the document.

Visual signature

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.

Digital signature

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.

If your document crosses into Europe, the level matters

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.

  • Qualified (QES)

    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."

  • Advanced with a qualified certificate

    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."

  • Advanced

    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."

  • Simple (visual signature)

    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."

  • Invalid or altered

    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.

The gap

Signing a PDF is still a bad experience

Not a marketing claim — every item below is publicly documented.

Preview

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.

Adobe Acrobat

€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.

PDF Expert

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.

DocuSign and the e-signature SaaS crowd

€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.

Coming soon

A free, unlimited signature validator

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.

The drop area for your signed PDF will live here.

Not available yet. It depends on compiling the signing core to WebAssembly, and it ships when it agrees with the app, not before.

Honest comparison

What the alternatives cost, and what we expect to charge

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.

Every PDFsigna figure on this page is an estimate. It is what we expect to charge, not a price you can pay today, and it can still change before release. Nothing is on sale. We publish it anyway, because what a thing will cost is exactly what you want to know before you spend any time on it — and because an estimate you can hold us to is worth more than a blank space.

What signing costs elsewhere, per year

Adobe Acrobat Standard
€219.60
Adobe Acrobat Pro
€290.28
DocuSign Standard
€276
Signaturit Business
€420
PDFsigna Pro
€39, once estimate

Competitor checkout prices verified in September 2026, not struck-through list prices.

The full comparison, product by product
Checkout prices verified in September 2026. Adobe, DocuSign and Signaturit figures come from their European storefronts, in euros; Adobe's include Spanish VAT. PDF Expert publishes in US dollars except for its Spanish App Store listing. The PDFsigna row is an estimate for a product that is not on sale.
Product Model Price Per year Signs with a certificate
PDFsigna Pro Perpetual licence — not on sale €39, paid once estimate — 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.

The shape of the offer, estimated

Free

€0

Forever
  • Full reader and annotation
  • Unlimited visual signatures
  • Unlimited signature validation
  • AcroForm form filling
  • One certificate-signed document per day

Pro

€39 estimate

One payment, perpetual licence
  • Unlimited signing with a certificate
  • Unlimited signature and stamp library
  • Company stamp builder with auto-dating
  • Batch signing and initial-every-page
  • Quick actions and system automation
  • Sync across your own devices

Plus

€19 estimate

Per year, entirely optional
  • Qualified timestamp bundle
  • Advanced validation with an exportable report
  • Watched folder
  • Priority support

Teams

€29 estimate

Per licence, five or more, paid once
  • Everything in Pro
  • Managed licences
  • Shared stamp library

No fake discounts

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.

No hidden renewals

Plus is a subscription because qualified timestamps genuinely cost money every time one is issued. Nothing else here is billed monthly.

Paid features stay paid for

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.

Where we actually are

Neither version is out, and here's what isn't ready

This is a pre-launch page. There is nothing to download and nothing to buy on it, and there won't be until the app does what this page says it does. We would rather tell you what's missing than let you find out after paying.

  • macOS In development — first
  • Windows In development — after macOS
  • iPhone and iPad Planned, later
  • Android Planned, later

  • 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.

Accessibility

A feature we advertise, not a box we tick

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.