Works locally — files never leave your browser

Highlight a PDF

Mark up any PDF with colour highlights, then pin notes and draw where they matter. It all happens in your browser, so the file never leaves your device.

Open your PDF to start Free to edit · no account · $1 only when you download
Free to edit
No sign-up
No upload

Highlighting is how you separate the parts that matter from the wall of text around them. Open your PDF here and drag over any passage, figure or clause to lay a translucent colour band across it — yellow to flag, another shade to sort by theme. Because the highlight sits on top of the real page rather than re-flowing it, the layout underneath stays exactly as the author set it, and you can drop as many marks as a dense contract or study guide needs.

A highlighter on its own only points; the useful markup is when you pair it with the reason. So beside each highlight you can pin a note explaining what caught your eye, or switch to freehand draw to circle a number, bracket a paragraph or scrawl a tick. One document ends up carrying the colour, the comment and the sketch together, which is far easier to hand back or revisit than a page of loose highlights with no context.

Everything above is free. You highlight, annotate and draw as much as you like, and only pay a single $1 when you want to download the marked-up PDF — no subscription, no watermark stamped across your notes, and no card kept on file for a surprise renewal. There is no sign-up either: the editor runs entirely on your machine, so a confidential brief or a graded assignment is read and marked locally and never uploaded to anyone's server.

How to highlight a PDF

1
Open the PDF
Drop your file into the browser editor. It opens straight away with no account and no upload — the document stays on your device.
2
Pick the highlighter and drag
Choose the highlight tool, set a colour, then drag across the text or area you want to mark. Repeat for every passage.
3
Add notes and draw
Pin a note next to a highlight to explain it, or use freehand draw to circle and annotate anything on the page.
4
Download for $1
Save your marked-up PDF for a one-time $1 — no watermark, no subscription, no recurring charge.
Open the editor now
No subscription
Others lock downloads behind $10–30/month plans. Here you pay $1 once, only when you export — nothing else.
Private by design
Your PDF is opened and edited inside your browser. It is never uploaded to a server — your file stays on your device.
Edits the real content
Change actual text, move and resize images, redact, sign and fill — not just sticky annotations on top. Full Unicode & Cyrillic.

Frequently asked questions

Is highlighting a PDF free?
Yes — highlighting, adding notes and drawing are all completely free. You only pay a one-time $1 if you want to download the marked-up PDF, with no subscription or watermark.
Is my PDF uploaded anywhere?
No. The editor runs entirely in your browser, so the file is read and highlighted on your own device and never sent to a server. There is no account or sign-up.
Can I use more than one highlight colour?
Yes. You can set the highlighter colour before each stroke, so you can code passages by theme — one shade to flag, another to sort — across the whole document.
Can I highlight a scanned PDF?
Yes. A scanned page is an image, and the highlight simply lays a translucent colour band over that image, so marking areas works fine even though the scan has no selectable text.
Will my highlights stay editable, or can I remove them?
While you work, each highlight, note and drawing stays a separate object you can move or delete. Once you download, they are flattened into the PDF so they display the same in any reader.

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Free to edit. No account, no upload. Just $1 when you're ready to download.

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