Free Tool

Free Website Annotation Tool

Annotate any public website in the browser. Paste a URL, click anywhere on the live page to drop numbered pins with notes, and share one link. Anyone who opens it sees the page with your pins and can add their own, no account and no install. OverlayQA's free annotation sessions stay live for 7 days.

How to Annotate a Website

  1. Paste your URL. Enter any publicly accessible URL into the input field.
  2. Click Annotate. The live page opens in an annotation session that stays live for 7 days.
  3. Click to drop pins. Click any element to drop a numbered pin and type a note. Each note captures the element and a screenshot automatically.
  4. Share one link. Send the session URL. Reviewers see your pins on the live page and can add their own notes.

Why Annotation Beats a List of Bugs

Written feedback about visual problems loses the one thing that matters: where. "The hero looks off" forces the developer to guess; a pin on the hero with a note does not. Feedback tied to the exact element removes the reproduce-and-relocate step from every single issue, which is where review cycles go to die.

The stakes of shipping unpolished pages keep rising. Qualtrics XM Institute (2024) put $3.7 trillion in global sales at risk from bad customer experience, with 51% of consumers cutting or stopping spending after a single bad experience. And the problems are there to find: the WebAIM Million study (2025) found WCAG failures on 94.8% of the top million home pages, averaging 51 errors per page. Pointing at those problems precisely is the first step to fixing them.

Annotation on the live page also beats screenshot markup. A screenshot freezes one viewport at one moment; a live session keeps pins attached to real elements at any screen size, and every note carries its screenshot and element details automatically.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this website annotation tool free? Yes. Paste a URL, drop as many pins as you need, and share the link. No account, no login, no install. Sessions expire after 7 days; your OverlayQA account keeps projects and share links for as long as you need them.

How do I annotate a website? Paste the site's URL into the tool and click Annotate. The live page opens in an annotation session where clicking any element drops a numbered pin with a note. Share the session URL and anyone can see your pins and add their own, directly on the real page instead of a static screenshot.

Do I need a browser extension to annotate a website? No. This tool runs entirely in the browser: the page loads through OverlayQA's server, so pins and notes work on any public URL without installing anything. The OverlayQA extension exists for pages a server cannot reach, like localhost, staging behind a VPN, or login-gated apps.

How long do annotations stay available? Free sessions and their share links stay live for 7 days, and the expiry is shown inside the session. After that the link shows an expired notice. Persistent projects, unlimited history, and team workflows are part of OverlayQA's paid product.

Can I annotate localhost or staging sites? Public staging URLs work. Localhost and VPN-gated pages do not, because the annotation session loads the page server-side and a server cannot reach your local machine. For local or login-gated pages, use the OverlayQA browser extension, which captures in your own browser.

Is this for annotating web pages like a note-taking app? This tool is built for visual feedback on websites: pointing at specific elements and writing what should change, then sharing that with whoever fixes it. If you want private reading annotations on articles, a highlights or note-taking app fits better. If you want a designer, developer, or client to see exactly which button is wrong, this is the right tool.

How is this different from screenshot markup? A marked-up screenshot freezes one viewport at one moment. An annotation session keeps the page live: reviewers see the real layout at their own screen size, pins stay attached to the actual elements, and each note carries a screenshot plus element details automatically. Nobody has to guess which part of a JPEG a red circle refers to.

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Last updated August 2026