How long does it take to get a contract signed?

The real benchmarks by contract type and deal size, the most common causes of delay, and how to fix them.

With e-signature tools, most contracts close within 1–5 days: NDAs often same-day, sales contracts and MSAs in 3–7 days. Paper-based signing adds days to weeks for mailing and manual signatures. Enterprise deals with legal review typically take 2–6 weeks, and complex MSAs can run longer — SpotDraft’s and Ironclad’s legal-ops benchmarking both put median cycle times above the low end of that range. New PandaDoc users cut their time-to-close by 30% and close 2x more deals within their first 2–3 months, according to PandaDoc's own benchmark data.

If your contract has been sitting unsigned for a week and you're wondering whether that's normal, it depends entirely on what kind of contract it is, how it's being sent, and how many people need to sign it. Below is the real breakdown, plus the specific things that are probably slowing yours down.

Average contract signing time: benchmarks by contract type and deal size

Signing time varies more by contract type than almost anything else. A one-page NDA and a 40-page enterprise agreement are never going to move at the same speed, regardless of tooling.

Ranges reflect typical e-signature turnaround compiled from SpotDraft’s 2025 State of Legal Ops report and Ironclad’s contract cycle time research, cross-checked against PandaDoc customer patterns. Legal review cycles, stakeholder count, and deal value shift any of these wider — the enterprise range especially; some complex MSAs average well beyond 6 weeks. Not a single controlled study.

Starting from a template cuts real time off every one of these. Browse the template library for ready-to-send NDA, sales contract, SOW, and MSA formats.

Deal size shifts the timeline too:

The pattern behind all of these numbers is consistent: more pages, more signers, and more dollars all add days. The method — e-signature versus a PDF someone has to print — changes the baseline speed within each category, sometimes by a factor of days to weeks.

Why contracts take so long to sign: the most common causes of delay

Most signing delays trace back to one of a handful of specific, fixable problems. If your contract has been sitting for a week, it's probably one of these:

1. Wrong or incomplete stakeholders identified upfront

The document reaches the first signer and stalls because someone realizes another approver is needed, someone who was never included in the first place. Now the document has to be pulled back, the missing person added, and the process restarted.

2. Missing or unclear signing fields

Signers open the document and can't tell where to sign or what's required. Rather than ask, most people just close the tab and forget about it. Ambiguity kills more signatures than any actual objection to the terms.

3. No reminder sent after initial delivery

The document lands in an inbox, gets buried under 50 other things, and nobody follows up. It's not that the recipient refused to sign. They genuinely forgot it existed.

4. Sent as a PDF attachment instead of an e-sign link

This one adds days by itself. A PDF attachment means the recipient has to print it, sign it by hand, scan it back in, and email it — or worse, mail it. Every one of those steps is a place the process can stall for days.

5. Multiple signers with no defined order

All signers get the document at the same time, with no sequence. The process now waits on the slowest person, and the sender has no visibility into who's actually holding things up. Everyone assumes someone else already handled it.

6. Sent at the wrong time

A contract sent late on a Friday afternoon sits over the entire weekend before anyone even opens it. Completion rates on late-Friday sends are consistently lower than sends earlier in the week, for the same reason cold email replies drop on Fridays. Attention is already gone for the week.

7. No mobile-optimized signing experience

The recipient opens the document on their phone, can't sign easily, and defers to “I'll do this on my laptop later.” Later often doesn't come for days.

How to speed up contract signing time with PandaDoc

Every cause above is a process problem, not a people problem, and process problems are solvable with the right setup. Here's how each maps to a specific fix:

• Missing or unclear fields: pre-built templates with required fields pre-assigned. Signers see exactly what's needed and where, before they even start reading. See the template library.

• Multiple signers, no order: signing order routes the document automatically. One person signs, the next person receives it. No manual forwarding, no guessing who's next. See how signing order works.

• No reminder sent: configurable auto-reminders nudge unsigned recipients on a schedule you set, without you having to remember to chase anyone. You can read more about auto-reminders.

• No mobile signing: recipients sign from any device in seconds, no download and no account required. See the PandaDoc mobile app.

• No visibility into what's stalling: document analytics and tracking show exactly when a document was opened, viewed, and by whom, so follow-up is based on behavior, not guesswork. More on document tracking.

• Face-to-face deals: in-person signing lets a rep open the document on their own device and collect the signature on the spot. Available on Business and Enterprise plans. 

See how PandaDoc's signing features work.

How long should your contract take to sign? Use AI to find out

The benchmarks above are industry averages. The number that actually matters is your own team's average, compared against what's typical for your contract type and deal size — and that's data you already have if you're using PandaDoc.

PandaDoc MCP lets you ask your AI agent to pull document status and timing data from your account, so you can calculate metrics like completion rates and time-to-signature.

See what you can do with PandaDoc MCP for the full list. Connect PandaDoc to Claude via the Claude Connector or to ChatGPT via the PandaDoc ChatGPT app, then ask something like “what's our average time to sign an enterprise MSA?” and get an answer pulled from your actual documents, turning an industry benchmark into a specific comparison for your own process.

The short version

Signing delays are almost always process problems, not people problems. The contract type and deal size set the baseline expectation, but missing fields, no signing order, no reminders, and paper-based delivery add the extra days on top of that baseline. Fix the process, and most of the wait disappears.

Start your free PandaDoc trial and cut your contract signing time.