PDF Page Numbers: Placement, Cover Pages and Page X of Y

Adding page numbers to a PDF should be a straightforward task. Whether you are finalizing a report, preparing a legal bundle, or just trying to keep track of a long document, knowing where numbers go and how to handle cover pages can save you a lot of time. The PDF Page Numbers tool stamps a plain number (1, 2, 3 and so on) on every page. The tool runs in your browser, so the file is not uploaded.

Available positions

When you use the tool, the only option you need to select is the position. The page numbers are written in Helvetica 12 pt black, and this styling is fixed. The numbers are drawn with pdf-lib’s drawText. You can choose from six positions:

• Top Left
• Top Center
• Top Right
• Bottom Left
• Bottom Center
• Bottom Right

This simple approach works well for most standard documents.

Leave the cover page unnumbered

A common requirement is to start the document with an unnumbered cover page, and begin numbering from the second page. Because the tool numbers every page by default, you can achieve an unnumbered cover page with a multi-step workflow:

1. Use Extract Pages to save your cover page as a separate file.
2. Use Remove Pages to delete the cover page from your main document.
3. Run the remaining document through PDF Page Numbers.
4. Use Merge PDF to combine the unnumbered cover page with the newly numbered document.

The result of this workflow is that page 1 (the cover) is unnumbered, page 2 shows “1”, page 3 shows “2”, and so on.

Programmatic Alternative: The Command Line

If you need more complex formatting, such as “Page X of Y”, Bates numbering, or custom fonts, command-line utilities are a powerful option.

One of the most robust CLI tools for this is Coherent PDF (cpdf). The examples below follow the cpdf manual but were not executed by us:

# "Page 3 of 12", 20 pt above the bottom edge, 10 pt text
cpdf -add-text "Page %Page of %EndPage" -bottom 20 -font-size 10 in.pdf -o out.pdf

# Skip the cover: stamp pages 2 to end only (the first stamped page shows 2)
cpdf -add-text "%Page" -bottom 20 in.pdf 2-end -o out.pdf

# Bates numbering starting at 23745
cpdf -add-text "Page ID: %Bates" -bates 23745 in.pdf -o out.pdf

For documents with rotated pages, you can add -prerotate to ensure the text is placed correctly. Please note that cpdf is released under the cpdf licence (AGPL); commercial use outside the AGPL needs a separate licence.

Feature Comparison