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PDF Header & Footer Online Free — PrivaTools

TL;DR: Upload a PDF, type header and/or footer text, and download a copy with that text added to every page.

Add headers and footers to PDF online. Insert custom text, dates, page numbers, or company information in the header and footer of your PDF pages. Free tool with flexible formatting options.

Unlike the freemium tools it replaces, PDF Header & Footer has no 'pro' upsell, no task-per-day cap, and no stamp on your output. Server-side processing happens in a sandboxed container that forgets your file as soon as the download finishes.

What PDF Header & Footer is best for

Add headers and footers to PDF online. Insert custom text, dates, page numbers, or company information in the header and footer of your PDF pages. Free tool with flexible formatting options. Use it when you need a quick, private, no-account way to handle a pdf in the browser, or when you want an auditable open-source alternative to iLovePDF, Smallpdf, Adobe Acrobat, PDF24, and Sejda. The page at /tool/header-footer is designed for one clear job: upload or provide the input, choose only the options that matter, and download the result without creating an account or passing through a sales funnel.

Privacy model for PDF Header & Footer

PDF operations that need server-side libraries run inside the PrivaTools container and return a fresh download; browser-only PDF helpers stay on-device. Temporary input and output files are not used for analytics, model training, advertising profiles, or product telemetry. The public demo uses anonymous page-view analytics only; file bytes, extracted text, filenames, passwords, signatures, and generated results are outside that analytics path. If your organization needs stricter controls, you can self-host all 214 PrivaTools utilities and keep processing on your own infrastructure.

Quality checklist

Before running PDF Header & Footer, confirm that the source file opens correctly and that you have permission to process it. Keep an untouched original, run one operation at a time when quality matters, and use Pipeline when you want repeatable multi-step output. For sensitive material, review the downloaded result before sharing it. For large files, give the browser time to finish the download and avoid refreshing the page mid-run. If a password, damaged upload, unsupported codec, or malformed document blocks processing, PrivaTools returns a plain-language error so you can pick the next recovery step instead of guessing.

Operational details

PDF Header & Footer is intentionally narrow: it does one pdf task and hands the result back as a normal download. That makes the output easy to inspect, rename, archive, attach to email, or feed into another tool. If you need a repeatable workflow, save the page, bookmark a Pipeline recipe, or self-host the API so the same steps can run from internal scripts. The interface avoids accounts and cloud folders on purpose: the safest default for private files is to process only the current request, return the result, and leave long-term storage under your control.

Using PDF Header & Footer on any device

PDF Header & Footer runs in any modern browser on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS — there is nothing to install, no extension to add, and no desktop app to keep updated. Because the interface is a single page, you can bookmark it, send the link to a colleague, or open it on a phone and get the same result you would on a laptop. There are no watermarks stamped onto your output, no sign-in wall before the download, and no paid tier that unlocks the “real” version later — the PDF Header & Footer you see is the complete tool. For teams that would rather keep everything in-house, the same endpoint ships in the MIT-licensed, self-hostable build, so you can run it behind your own firewall with identical behaviour and no outbound calls. That combination — instant in the browser for individuals, fully self-hostable for organizations — is what keeps a private file genuinely private from upload to download.

How to use the PDF Header & Footer tool on PrivaTools

  1. Upload your PDF — Drop a PDF up to 500 MB.
  2. Enter header and footer text — Optional left/center/right slots for both header and footer. Use placeholders like {page}, {total}, {date} for dynamic content.
  3. Apply and download — Click Apply. The text is stamped at the top and bottom of every page in the chosen font size.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will the header/footer overlap existing content?

It might if your pages have content close to the edges. Use the Crop or Resize tool first to add margin space if needed.

Can I exclude the cover page?

Pages-to-affect parameter accepts ranges like '2-' to skip the first page or '2-N-1' to skip first + last.

Are these editable annotations or baked-in?

Baked into the page content. They can't be removed without re-editing — use Whiteout to cover them if needed later.

Last reviewed 2026-05-01 by the PrivaTools maintainers. Source code on (MIT-licensed, self-hostable).

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