Add Page Numbers to PDF

This tool stamps a page number on every page of a PDF in the form 3 / 12, meaning page three of twelve, centred along the bottom edge. Add your file, press Add page numbers and download the numbered copy. It is meant for reports, theses, tender documents and application bundles where a reader or an office clerk needs to refer to a specific page.

What the numbers look like

• Format: the page number, a slash and the total page count, for example 7 / 40.
• Position: centred horizontally, with the text sitting 16 points (about 5.6 mm) above the bottom edge of the page.
• Style: 10-point Helvetica in dark grey, small enough not to compete with your own content.
• Coverage: every page is numbered, starting from 1 on the very first page, cover included.

There are no settings for position, font, size or starting number. The numbers are added as real PDF text rather than an image, so they print sharply and can be selected and searched. Nothing else on the page is changed.

Number the document last

The numbers become part of each page, so a page removed or inserted afterwards will leave a gap or a wrong total. Finish assembling first: join your files with Merge PDF, take out blank or duplicate pages, check the order, and only then add numbers. For a 12-page project report the result reads 1 / 12 on the cover, 3 / 12 on the third page and 12 / 12 on the last.

Leaving the cover page unnumbered

Many institutions want numbering to begin after the title page. The tool always numbers every page, but you can get there in three steps:

1. Use Split PDF to save the cover (page 1) and the body (for a 40-page file, pages 2-40) as two separate files.
2. Run the body through this tool. Its pages now read 1 / 39 to 39 / 39.
3. Merge the cover in front of the numbered body.

The same approach works for front matter such as a declaration, certificate and table of contents: keep them in the first file and number only the chapters.

Check these before you send the file

• Existing footers. If your pages already carry a footer, a letterhead strip or a printed page number in the bottom few millimetres, the new number may overlap it.
• Dark scanned edges. Scans often have a grey or black border along the bottom, which can hide grey numbers. Crop or rescan if the numbers are hard to read.
• Rotated pages. A page that is shown sideways through a rotation setting in the PDF keeps its original bottom edge, so its number can appear along a side of the page instead.
• Locked files. Remove any password first by saving an unlocked copy from a viewer that knows the password.

The numbering runs inside your browser, so the document is not uploaded anywhere.