• Pricing
  • Teams
  1. Home
  2. Recommendation Letters

Recommendation Letters

Say hello to your own personal library of templates for writing those tricky recommendation letters when you just can’t find the words. Downloadable, printable, and easy to convert to MS Word, you’ll have a professional letter ready to use in minutes.

Recommendation Letter Templates

We’ve got the structure, you bring the heart. From generic to professional, employment, or educational recommendations, we’ve got you covered with all the recommendation letter templates you’ll need for putting in a good word.

Standard Recommendation Letters

Get what you need with our standard recommendation letter templates. From generic templates to keep things simple, to a law school letter template you can customize to your liking, you’re totally covered with the basics.

Employment Recommendation Letters

Employment recommendation letters are seldom easy to write. We bring the structure, most of the words, plus helpful tips and handy cues to help you personalize yours with our nifty templates.

Academic Recommendation Letters

Need to write an academic recommendation letter? Don’t fret, there’s no need to start from scratch. We’ve got you covered with templates for everything from grad school and medical school, to scholarships and law school.

Free Recommendation Letter Templates

Get free, customizable recommendation letter templates that suit you. With us, you’ll have full access to all our templates that were created specifically for different scenarios, such as employment, education, academia, as well as the basics. Our templates are free of charge and you can use them any time you like.

Simply select the template ‌you want to use and download to start editing it to your liking. You can use our tools to add your electronic signature, compress, merge, add a password, add page numbers to your letter, and more.

Printable Recommendation Letter Templates

Electronic recommendation letters are used more frequently nowadays, but hard copy letters are still in use. Even though we’re on a mission to make the world a paperless place, we also understand that important documents do sometimes still need to be printed, whether for official postal delivery or simply for posterity.

That’s why we’ve made it possible not only to download, save, and share our templates, but to print them as well. Once you’re happy with your letter, you can simply click on the printer icon at the top-right corner and your printer setup should appear, ready for printing.

Professional Recommendation Letter Templates for Anyone

It can be tough to write the perfect recommendation letter, since there’s often a lot riding on your word about the candidate. Smallpdf’s templates take the guesswork out of writing a well-structured letter with the right tone of voice—and the right details about the candidate.

We’ve done all the groundwork on our templates, so you can commit your time and energy instead to thinking about not only why you would recommend the candidate, but of examples that support your motivation.

Any Questions?

  • Can I use these recommendation letter templates as is?

    If you need a recommendation letter to save, download, or print keep for later, you’re more than welcome to do just that—it’s totally free and you can use it anytime. For a proper reference letter, we suggest downloading the template and personalizing it to give the candidate the best chance possible.


  • Can I print from Smallpdf?

    Absolutely! Once you’ve edited and signed your recommendation letter template, you’ll have the option to save your document to Dropbox, Google Drive, or to Smallpdf. Alternatively, you can save your document to your device, or print it directly from Smallpdf. Remember, hard copies aren’t forever, so we recommend saving your documents digitally to your device or the cloud.


  • Does using a template mean I don’t care about the candidate?

    Definitely not. We get this question a lot, because many people feel that not writing a recommendation letter from scratch makes it too easy. We’re here to tell you that starting with a template is actually a great way to honor the candidate with a quicker turnaround, the right document structure, plus more time and energy to dedicate to thinking about what to say about them.


  • Should recommendation letters be e-signed?

    Most of the time, yes. A recommendation letter, even if you’ve used a template to craft it, represents your personal assurance that you can vouch for the candidate you are recommending. This is pretty serious stuff, not just because your reputation is behind it, but your word could mean the difference between the candidate being successful or not. That’s why it’s generally a good idea to e-sign a recommendation letter—it’s that final stamp of formality.


  • Can I compress a letter to an email-ready size?

    It may sometimes be required of you to submit your reference letter in a specific size. Our Compress tool offers you two compression options, basic and strong. Basic compress should be enough in most cases to reduce the size of your document. The quality won’t be affected either, so you don’t need to worry about blurry images.


Document Tools—Made for You

Keep document work simple with over 20 easy-to-use tools for simplifying document work. Edit, e-sign, convert, compress, and more…