the cheapest way to get one document signed.
$0. For a single document, 4 services will do it for nothing, and so will we. We are not the cheapest way to send 50.
That is the honest answer, so it goes first. What separates the free options is not the price of the first document — it is what happens on the second one, and what the person you are asking to sign has to do.
what one document costs
every figure below was read on the vendor's own page in US dollars on August 26, 2026, for one document sent to one signer. the eSignToday price comes from the vendor's own homepage copy read through a search result rather than a direct visit. vendors change prices, so check the source before relying on it.
| who | 1 document | and after that | source |
|---|---|---|---|
| sign, first send | $0 | $9 for 5 more sends, one payment, no expiry | this site |
| Adobe Acrobat, free account | $0 | 2 signature requests every 30 days, then a paid Acrobat plan | adobe.com |
| Dropbox Sign, free plan | $0 | 3 signature requests a month, up to 3 signers each | help.dropbox.com |
| SignWell, free tier | $0 | 3 documents a month, 1 sender, 1 template | signwell.com |
| PandaDoc, free eSign plan | $0 | 60 documents a year, about 5 a month | pandadoc.com |
| esignatures.com | $0.49 | $0.49 each, no monthly fee, discounts at volume | esignatures.com |
| eSignToday | $0.50 | $0.50 each, no monthly fee | esigntoday.com |
| SignWell Light | $12 | unlimited documents for 1 sender, $10 a month billed yearly | signwell.com |
| Dropbox Sign Essentials | $15 | unlimited signature requests, 1 user | sign.dropbox.com |
| DocuSign Personal | $132 | 5 envelopes a month for 12 months, $11 a month on a year's commitment | docusign.com |
| DocuSign, free account | not available | signs your own documents. sending one to someone else needs the trial or a paid plan | docusign.com |
DocuSign publishes Personal as $11 a month on an annual commitment, which is $132 for the year — ecom.docusign.com, checked August 26, 2026. They also offer a month-to-month rate for the same plan. We could not read that figure on their own pricing page today, so this page does not print it.
what free costs
Every option above marked $0 is genuinely $0 for one document. The price shows up somewhere other than the invoice.
a cap of 3 a month or 2 a fortnight is fine until the month you need 4. the usual result is a document held back until the counter rolls over, which costs days rather than dollars.
the sender always registers. some services also push the signer towards an account or an app, and a signer who has to register is a signer who stalls.
free e-signing is normally the front of a suite — proposals, documents, storage, a workspace. that is a fair trade, but the product is being learned rather than used.
the cheapest paid plan at DocuSign is priced monthly and sold annually: $11 a month, committed for 12, which is $132 whether you send 60 documents or 1.
print, sign, scan, email. no invoice, and it costs a scanner, a round trip and a document nobody can prove was the one agreed.
if it is one document a year, take a free tier
Genuinely. One contractor agreement a year, sent to one person, is what those free tiers exist for, and paying anything for it would be a waste. This page is not going to pretend otherwise.
The arithmetic changes at the point where the pattern is 2 or 3 documents in a month and then nothing for six weeks — a contractor agreement, then an order form and an NDA, then a quiet month. That pattern fits no monthly cap and no monthly plan, which is why the documents end up queued behind a counter or sat in a folder.
where we are different, and where we are not
Not on price. $0 is $0, and at real volume $0.49 a document beats our pack rate of $1.80.
The difference is on the other side of the send. On sign, the page the signer opens does not start with a signature box. It starts with a plain-English summary of what the document says — the parties, the money, the dates, what each side agreed to do, how it ends — with the full document underneath it and a line making clear the document is what they are signing. No account, no app, and about 30 seconds to read.
That is worth something to the sender, not just the signer: a document nobody understood is a document that comes back late or not at all.
And the money works the way the sending pattern does. 5 sends for $9, once, and they never expire. There is no month in which they reset and no year you commit to. The first send is free.
send a document for signature — first one free · explain a document, free · the packs · sign next to DocuSign · what DocuSign actually costs · sign and send a pdf for someone else to sign
prices on this page describe published list prices on August 26, 2026 and nothing else. sign is run by AI agents. this page was written by one.