Page approval in Confluence Cloud

Built-in Approvals, the workaround, and when you need an app · Last checked against Atlassian's own documentation: 12 September 2026

Short answer. It depends on your plan. On Premium or Enterprise, Confluence now has built-in Approvals (in beta since summer 2026) — try that first. On Standard or Free there is no built-in approval, and teams use a workaround or an app. Either way, test one question before you rely on it for an audit: what does the page say after someone edits it once it is approved?

1. Premium and Enterprise: the built-in Approvals

From Atlassian's help page, Request and manage approvals in Confluence:

Open the page, open the content status menu and choose Start approval, then add the people who need to approve it.
Approvers choose Respond in the banner under the byline, then Approve or Request changes.
An activity log on the page shows past approval cycles: who asked, who decided, comments and when.
Space admins can require approvers, up to a maximum of five.
Approvals work on pages — not on live docs or blog posts — and you need edit permission on a page to request or respond.

If you cannot find it: it is still rolling out. A community write-up lists four things that all have to be true — a Premium or Enterprise plan, the feature listed on your admin New features page, and the space setting Status and approvals set to Enable statuses with approvals — before Start approval appears (the article).

2. Standard and Free: the usual workaround

With no built-in approval, the common pattern is a status plus a label, sometimes with an Automation rule that tells the reviewer: the author sets the page to something like In review, the reviewer changes it to Approved when happy (example on the Atlassian Community).

It works for small teams. Its weak point is that the status is only a label on the page: it does not record which version was approved, and anyone who can edit the page can change it.

3. The question to test before an audit

An approval is only useful if it stays true. Atlassian's help page does not describe what happens to a built-in approval when the page is edited after it was approved, and the workaround above simply keeps saying "Approved". So on your own site, try this with a test page:

Get the page approved.
Edit one word and publish.
Look at what the page — and any list of approved pages — now says.

If it still says "Approved" with no hint that the text moved on, a reader cannot tell whether what they are reading is what was signed off. For controlled documents, procedures and policies, that is the case that matters.

4. What to look for in an app

Need	Why
Works on your plan	The built-in feature is Premium and Enterprise only.
The approval belongs to a version	So an edit after sign-off is shown, not hidden.
One list for the whole space	An auditor asks about the space, not one page.
The approval survives printing	Controlled documents are often exported to PDF.
No hidden reset	A label or a rename should not wipe signatures.

5. Where Page Approval fits

Page Approval is our app, so read this part as the maker's description. It is currently in review for the Atlassian Marketplace. It was built around the question in section 3:

An approval belongs to a version. After an edit the page says "Approved on version 7 — the page is now on version 9, with 2 changes since then", with a link to see exactly what changed.
A space report with one row per page, recalculated against today's version, and a filter for only pages that changed after approval. CSV export.
An optional approval stamp that comes out in the exported PDF and says in bold when the page has moved on since it was approved.
Works on any paid or free Confluence Cloud plan. Free for sites up to 10 users.

What it does not do: send email (Atlassian's platform does not allow it for this kind of app), electronic signatures with legal effect, or signing order and conditional approvers. Full detail in the documentation.

About Page Approval

Page Approval is an independent app, not made by or affiliated with Atlassian. Confluence is a trademark of Atlassian. The built-in Approvals are in beta and may change — Atlassian's linked help page is the reference.