Reports, theses, and multi-page contracts all tend to need page numbers eventually — usually after the document was written without them, which means adding them after the fact rather than rebuilding the file from scratch.

The basics

Add Page Numbers stamps a number on every page, and gives you control over:

  • Position — corner or center, top or bottom, matching whatever convention your document (or the portal you’re submitting to) expects.
  • Starting number — useful if this PDF is actually a continuation of another document and shouldn’t restart at 1.
  • Format — a plain number (“3”), or the number alongside the total (“3 / 12”) if you want readers to see at a glance how far through the document they are.

Cover pages

Most real documents — reports, theses, proposals — have a title page that shouldn’t be numbered, with numbering starting from the page after it (often still labeled “1” on what’s technically the second physical page). Check “first page is a cover page” and the tool skips numbering that page entirely, without shifting the numbering sequence on the pages that follow.

This covers a single title page. If your document has a longer front-matter block — a title page, an abstract, a table of contents — before the numbering you actually want to start, “cover page” only skips page one; it won’t skip five pages of front matter and start the body at 1. For a longer front matter, split the file at the point the numbering should start, run this tool on the body only, then merge the unnumbered front matter back in front of it.

One thing this tool doesn’t do: lowercase Roman numerals (i, ii, iii) for front matter, which is the convention a lot of thesis and dissertation formatting guides ask for before the body switches to 1, 2, 3. It only outputs plain Arabic numbers.

Facing pages (single vs. double-sided documents)

If your document is going to be printed double-sided and bound, page numbers are usually mirrored — outer corner on the right for odd pages, outer corner on the left for even pages — so the numbers stay towards the outside edge of the book rather than getting swallowed near the spine. The “facing pages” mode handles this automatically instead of you having to work out the mirroring by hand.

What you can’t change

The number itself is fixed styling: small gray Helvetica, sized to stay out of the way rather than draw attention. There’s no font picker, no color swatch, no bumping the size up. If a submission portal or style guide is picky about the exact look of the page number, this tool won’t match it pixel-for-pixel — it’s built for “get a correct, unobtrusive number on every page” rather than typographic control.

Page numbers are often just one part of a running footer that also includes a document title or date. If you need that instead of (or alongside) a plain page number, Header & Footer supports a page-number placeholder within a custom text line, so you can build something like “Confidential — Page 3 of 24” as a single footer.

Your file stays on your device

Numbering pages doesn’t need a server. Everything happens in your browser — the PDF is never uploaded anywhere, which matters if the document is a contract, a thesis with unpublished research, or anything else you’d rather not hand to a third-party server just to get a number stamped on it.