Docusign vs PandaDoc vs SignNow: the real bill

Three e-signature vendors, three different billing units, and the cheapest one changes depending on whether you count people or signatures. Docusign charges per user and caps envelopes per user. PandaDoc charges per seat and shows both billing rates. SignNow charges for the account and lets the team in free. At 20 people the published annual gap between the cheapest and the dearest of them is $96 against $10,800 by our arithmetic. All figures come from the three pricing pages as displayed on October 13, 2026, in the currency each page shows.

Ds3.6Docusign eSignature

4.0PandaDoc

Winner

3.8airSlate SignNow

The short answer depends on which unit you are buying

On our rubric PandaDoc edges this comparison, because it publishes both billing rates in explicit USD, runs a real free tier and shows no seat ceiling. That is why it carries the winner badge above.

On published price alone it is not close, and the winner is a different product.

• Cheapest published subscription at any headcount: SignNow. Starter is $8 a month billed annually, which is $96 a year for 1 person or 50, because team members are free. The ceiling is 100 completed signature invites a year for the whole account
• Best balance of price and volume: PandaDoc. Starter at $19 USD per seat per month billed annually is $228 a seat a year, and the feature table shows unlimited interface documents, though the FAQ on the same page prices per-document overage
• Broadest agreement workflow: Docusign. Business Pro at $45 per user per month adds payments during signing, web forms, interactive fields and bulk send, and carries 100 envelopes per user per year
• None of the three publishes a price for single sign-on. All three put it behind a sales conversation

This comparison is a reading of three price lists, not a test

Every figure below was read from the vendor's own pricing page on October 13, 2026. Docusign and SignNow were read through a headless browser as well as a direct fetch, because both redirect to separate commerce hosts.

PandaDoc was read through a headless browser after a direct fetch was rate-limited.

The editors did not run accounts on any of the three. What is graded is pricing structure, published limits and the arithmetic of a 12-month bill.

Two vendors were considered and left out of the price table. Dropbox Sign publishes clean USD figures and appears below, where it changes the answer.

Adobe's Acrobat Sign pricing URL served the general Acrobat plan line-up rather than a Sign tier list on October 13, 2026, so it is not priced here.

At 1 person, PandaDoc is free and Docusign is not

The one-person case separates a free tier from a cheap tier, and only one of the three has a free tier at all.

The figures are editorial arithmetic from the displayed annual-billing prices, over 12 months, excluding tax and overage.

• PandaDoc Free: $0 USD, with 5 documents a month shared, so 60 a year
• SignNow Starter: $96 a year, with 100 signature invites a year
• Docusign Personal: $132 a year, with 5 envelopes a month, so 60 a year, and one user only
• PandaDoc Starter: $228 a year
• SignNow Business: $360 a year
• Docusign Standard: $360 a year, with 100 envelopes
• Docusign Business Pro: $540 a year
• PandaDoc Business: $588 a year

At 5 people, SignNow stops scaling and the other two start

Five is where the account-priced model begins to look strange. SignNow's bill does not move at all, because the page prices the account and lets team members in free.

The other two multiply by five.

• SignNow Starter: $96 a year. SignNow Business: $360 a year. Unchanged from one person
• PandaDoc Starter: $1,140 a year. PandaDoc Business: $2,940 a year
• Docusign Standard: $1,800 a year, with 500 envelopes included. Business Pro: $2,700 a year
• Included volume at 5 people: 500 envelopes on Docusign, 100 invites on SignNow, unlimited interface documents on PandaDoc per its feature table
• PandaDoc Free is still $0, but 5 documents a month is now shared across five people rather than one

At 20 people, the gap is two orders of magnitude

This is the headcount where the structures diverge most, and where a buyer who compares headline prices without reading the limits will make an expensive mistake in either direction.

• SignNow Starter: $96 a year. SignNow Business: $360 a year
• PandaDoc Starter: $4,560 a year. PandaDoc Business: $11,760 a year
• Docusign Standard: $7,200 a year. Business Pro: $10,800 a year
• Included volume: 2,000 envelopes on Docusign against 100 invites on SignNow, a ratio of 20 to 1 for a price ratio of 75 to 1 against Starter
• Cost per included signature at 20 people: $3.60 on Docusign Standard, $5.40 on Business Pro, $0.96 on SignNow Starter, $3.60 on SignNow Business

At 50 people, Docusign hits its own ceiling

Fifty is the last headcount Docusign will sell on the website. The feature table caps Standard and Business Pro at up to 50 users, and 50-plus routes to Enhanced plans with a phone number.

PandaDoc and SignNow state no ceiling.

• SignNow Starter: $96 a year. SignNow Business: $360 a year
• PandaDoc Starter: $11,400 a year. PandaDoc Business: $29,400 a year
• Docusign Standard: $18,000 a year, with 5,000 envelopes. Business Pro: $27,000 a year
• Above 50 users on Docusign: Enhanced plans, contact sales, with custom envelope limits and no published rate
• The cheapest and dearest published annual figures at 50 people are $96 and $29,400, a ratio of about 306 to 1 by our arithmetic

Volume is the real price, and only one of the three prices it honestly

A per-person comparison is misleading here, because two of the three plans meter signatures rather than people. The useful unit is cost per included signature.

SignNow Starter works out to $0.96 per included invite and Docusign Standard to $3.60 per included envelope, at any headcount, because both price and allowance scale together on Docusign and neither scales on SignNow.

Past the allowance, the picture goes dark. Docusign's FAQ says excess envelopes are billed pay-as-you-go at a set per-envelope rate and does not print it. SignNow says the plan transitions to pay-as-you-go and prints a rate only for Enterprise, from $1.50 per invite.

PandaDoc is the only one of the three with published overage figures: $3.50 per document on Starter Monthly, $2 on Starter Annual and $2.60 on Business Monthly. No rate appears for Business Annual.

That is also where PandaDoc contradicts itself, and we print both halves rather than pick one.

The plan card and feature table say unlimited documents on Starter. The FAQ asks what happens when you reach your document limit and prices the overflow. Both were live on the same page on October 13, 2026.

For the method behind these conversions, see comparing quotes priced in different units.

The surcharges differ more than the subscriptions

Three kinds of extra charge decide whether a quote survives contact with a real month of work: per-signature overage, per-message delivery and identity checks.

Docusign is the only one of the three that prices delivery and identity separately, and both can only be attached to Standard or Business Pro.

• Docusign Send with SMS: starting at $0.36 per delivery, additional tax may apply. A workload of 500 SMS signings a year has a floor of $180 on this line
• Docusign Verify recipient identity: starting at $2.40 per ID verification attempt. The word attempt means a failed check that is retried reads as two charges
• Docusign one-time bonus on Standard and Business Pro: 5 SMS deliveries and 5 identity verifications. A sample, not an allowance
• PandaDoc: SMS verification and knowledge-based authentication with ID verification are listed as included rather than metered on the paid tiers
• PandaDoc usage credits: API, bulk send, web forms, CRM integrations and workflow automation all consume credits, and no credit pack price appears on the page
• SignNow: SMS document delivery and signer authentication by password, SMS or phone call are features of the $30 Business tier rather than metered lines
• Notarisation: priced by none of the three. PandaDoc places it on Enterprise, SignNow lists remote online notary in its feature matrix, and Docusign does not price it on the eSignature page

Two vendors publish the annual discount and one only claims it

All three advertise a saving for paying yearly. Two of them let you check it.

PandaDoc prints $19 USD against $35 USD on Starter and $49 USD against $65 USD on Business. The banner claim of up to 46 percent matches the Starter pair and overstates the Business pair, which is about 25 percent.

SignNow prints $8 against $20, $15 against $30 and $30 against $50, and states each saving in dollars: $144, $180 and $240 a year. Each figure equals the monthly gap times twelve, which is how a reader confirms which number is which.

Docusign shows one subscription type, labelled Annual with the subtitle Billed monthly, and a banner reading that you are saving up to 33 percent.

Neither a direct fetch nor a headless-browser read on October 13, 2026 surfaced the month-to-month rate, and a URL carrying monthly billing parameters returned the same cards. The claim cannot be checked against the page.

The cost of guessing wrong is large. On PandaDoc Starter, choosing annual over monthly saves $192 per seat per year, or $9,600 across 50 seats, by our arithmetic. How to read a per-seat pricing page sets out the order in which to check these.

Dropbox Sign changes the answer at one and five, then disappears

A fourth price list is worth putting beside these three, because it is the cheapest uncapped single-user option we read.

Dropbox Sign prices in explicit USD on its product pricing page, checked October 13, 2026. Essentials is $15 USD a month billed monthly, or $10.05 USD a month at $120.60 USD billed yearly, for one user with unlimited signature requests and a 30-day trial.

Standard is $25 USD per user per month billed monthly, or $17.50 USD per user per month starting at $420 USD billed yearly, for 2 or more users. The page caps that at 5 and says for 5-plus users, contact us.

So at one user, $120.60 a year for unlimited requests undercuts every uncapped option here. At five users, $1,050 a year by our arithmetic sits between PandaDoc Starter and Docusign Standard.

At 20 and 50 users Dropbox Sign has no published price at all: Premium reads get a custom quote. That is why it is not in the main table.

Choose Docusign if, PandaDoc if, SignNow if

The three plans answer three different questions, so the decision is usually settled by one sentence about your own volume.

• Choose Docusign if every person in the account sends agreements steadily, roughly 8 a month each, and you need payments collected during signing, web forms, interactive fields and bulk send on one invoice
• Choose Docusign if your signers span many languages, since 44-plus signing languages are listed on every tier including Personal
• Choose PandaDoc if your agreements are proposals and quotes with pricing tables, or if you want to start at $0 USD and upgrade when 5 documents a month stops being enough
• Choose PandaDoc if you want both billing rates and the currency code printed before you commit a year
• Choose SignNow if your headcount is far larger than your signing volume, which is the common case for clinics, schools, property managers and back-office teams
• Choose SignNow if you want custom branding, SMS delivery and signer authentication without reaching an enterprise contract, which Business covers at $30 a month
• Choose none of the three self-serve lists if single sign-on, phone support or HIPAA compliance is a day-one requirement, because all three put those behind a quote

What none of the three will tell you on the page

Four questions survive all three price lists, and all four belong in the order form rather than the FAQ.

What the overage rate is. Docusign and SignNow both describe pay-as-you-go without printing a figure for self-serve tiers, and PandaDoc prints three figures but not one for Business Annual.

Whether the allowance pools. Docusign says a total of 100 envelopes per user per year and never says whether one user may draw on another's unused share.

What single sign-on costs. All three treat it as a sales conversation rather than a line item.

What support you actually get. Only PandaDoc names a channel on its cheapest tier, listing 24/7 web ticket and email support on Free. Docusign puts 24/7 live technical support on Enhanced plans and SignNow puts phone support on Enterprise.

Our note on turning a pricing page into a bill covers how to get these written down, and budgeting for usage-based pricing covers how to cap them once they are.

Bottom line

PandaDoc takes the rubric because it prices in named currency, publishes both billing periods and runs a working free tier, but it argues with itself about the one limit that sets the bill.

SignNow takes the money. At $96 a year for any headcount it is the cheapest published route to compliant e-signature in this group, right up to the 100th signature of the year, after which the price is unpublished.

Docusign takes the workflow. At $30 or $45 per user per month it is the most expensive per signature and the only one of the three with payments, web forms and interactive fields on a self-serve tier.

Work out your signatures per year before your seats per month. Then read the overage clause. All figures here were displayed on October 13, 2026 and will drift.

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