Add page numbers to PDF

How to number PDF pages

1. Drop your PDF above. Drag it in, or click to browse.
2. Choose a style and position. Plain “1, 2, 3”, “Page 1 of N”, or Bates numbering. Put it in any corner or centered, top or bottom, and set a custom starting number under Options.
3. Click Add, then Download. The numbered copy is built on your device.

Numbering a legal production instead?

The same engine does it, but the dedicated Bates numbering tool is the one you want: it opens with the conventions already set, with bottom-right placement, six-digit padding, a prefix for the producing party, and a custom start number for carrying a range across productions.

When the printed number shouldn't start at 1

The commonest numbering mistake is letting the count start at the first sheet of paper regardless of what that sheet is. Real documents rarely work that way, which is what the custom start number is for.

A report with a cover and contents page usually starts its body at 1, so the count begins a few pages in; a chapter pulled out of a longer work keeps the numbering it had, or its cross-references stop making sense. A document split for review needs each part numbered from where the last one ended, so a reader can say "page 47" and be understood. Setting the start number handles all three, and it only changes what gets printed.

The related question is whether the number should appear at all on the front matter. Conventionally a cover carries no number even when it is counted, and if that matters for your document, number the body pages separately: extract them, number them, and merge the cover back on. It is a couple more steps than it should be, and it produces exactly the right result.

Page labels: the other numbering, and why yours disagree

There are two different numbers on a PDF page and they have nothing to do with each other. One is printed on the paper. The other is what your reader shows in its page box and under its thumbnails, and it comes from a thing the format calls page labels.

A PDF can carry an optional table mapping page positions to labels. Each entry sets a style (decimal, uppercase or lowercase roman, letters) plus an optional prefix and a number to start from. That is how a well-made book PDF shows i, ii, iii through the front matter and then restarts at 1 for chapter one, with the reader's page box agreeing with the printed folio the whole way down. Where a document has no such table, readers just count sheets from 1, which is why an ordinary scan shows "page 14" while the paper says "8".

To be clear about what this tool does, because the two get conflated: it stamps a visible number onto the page. It does not write page labels, so your reader's page box will keep counting sheets from 1 regardless of what gets printed in the corner. For the usual jobs (a report going to print, a document that needs citable pages, a production for filing), the printed number is the one that matters and the labels are irrelevant. If you specifically need roman front matter in the reader's navigation, that is a page-label edit and wants a full authoring application.

Where to put them, and what can go wrong

Six positions are offered: any corner, plus centred at the top or bottom. Bottom-centre is the safe default and suits almost anything read on screen, because it sits clear of the text on every page regardless of layout. Top-right reads as more formal and is common in legal and corporate documents, where Bates numbering has its own bottom-right convention.

Printed books alternate the number to the outer edge, right on odd pages and left on even, so it falls under the reader's thumb. That mirroring isn't offered here, since every page gets the same treatment; for a bound book, a fixed bottom-centre number is the sane compromise, and a layout application is the right tool for true mirrored folios.

Two things to watch before you commit:

• Numbers the document already has. If the pages were numbered when the file was made, those are part of the page and stay there. Stamping new ones produces two competing sets, usually disagreeing. Check a middle page before running the whole document.
• Margins. The number is drawn near the page edge, and if the document is destined for binding or has been cropped tightly, it can end up in the gutter or trimmed off. Anything that will be bound wants a wider inner margin than you'd think.

Number last, once the document is final. Numbers applied before merging or rearranging stay with their pages and end up in the wrong order, which is, ironically, worse than no numbers at all, because now the document looks authoritative about a sequence that isn't true.

Frequently asked questions