Compress PDF
Shrink heavy PDFs so they fit email attachments and upload limits.
Done
This copy has no password or restrictions. The original was protected, but anyone who has this copy can open, print and copy it — to lock it again, use Protect PDF.
To get under the limit, send the document in parts with Split PDF, or take out pages the form does not need with Delete PDF Pages, then compress again.
How to compress a PDF
- Drop one PDF onto the box above, or click it to browse.
- Choose a Compression level. Balanced is selected by default; Light renders pages at a higher resolution and squeezes them less, Strong does the opposite for the smallest file.
- If an upload form has a hard limit, also pick a Target size: under 100 KB, 200 KB, 500 KB, 1 MB or a figure of your own. The tool then looks for the highest quality that fits, starting at the chosen level's resolution and lowering it only if it must. There are ready-made pages for 100 KB and 200 KB limits.
- Press Compress PDF. The progress bar counts through the pages as each one is redrawn; with a target, the status line also says which attempt it is on.
- If the result is smaller, it downloads as your filename with -compressed added, and the panel below shows the before and after sizes with the percentage saved. If it is not smaller, or a target could not be reached, nothing downloads on its own: you see the sizes, how far off the target it is, and a button to download it anyway.
What people use it for
Almost always because something refuses to go through: an attachment limit, an upload form, or a portal with a stubborn maximum size.
- Getting a scanned contract under the size cap of a government or bank upload form.
- Emailing a photo-heavy site report or inspection record that started out at tens of megabytes.
- Slimming a scanned passport or ID copy before attaching it to a booking or application.
- Reducing a scanned set of receipts before filing them with an expense claim.
- Making a brochure light enough to sit on a website without a slow download.
Good to know
The important limitation first: this tool works by drawing each page onto a canvas and saving that picture as a JPEG inside a new PDF. Page dimensions are preserved and the document still looks like the original, but everything on the page becomes part of an image. Text is no longer selectable, no longer searchable, no longer readable by a screen reader, and links, bookmarks and form fields do not survive. For scans and image-heavy documents that is a fine trade, since they were pictures already. For a text document, a contract you expect someone to search, or anything that must stay accessible, this is the wrong tool. A password does not carry over either: a protected PDF opens once you type its password, but the compressed copy is saved without one, so anyone who has it can open it. The result panel points this out, and Protect PDF can lock the copy again.
Results also vary a lot by document. A PDF that is already well optimised — plain text exported from a word processor, or a file another tool has compressed — can come out no smaller, or even slightly larger. When that happens the page says so plainly, skips the automatic download and shows both sizes, with a Download anyway button if you still want the file; otherwise try the Strong level or simply keep your original. Very large sheets, such as posters or drawings, are drawn at a reduced resolution so that no page image exceeds about 16.7 million pixels, the most that phones and some browsers can handle. Long documents take real time and processing power because every page is rendered — with a target, sometimes more than once — and rendering does continue if you switch to another tab.
None of this involves a server. Page rendering, JPEG encoding and PDF rebuilding all happen with your browser's own graphics and file machinery, so a confidential scan stays on the machine it started on — no upload step, no copy sitting in someone's queue, unlike the usual online compressor.
Questions people ask
Which level should I pick?
Start with Balanced and open the result. If the text looks soft where it matters, redo it on Light; if you are still over an upload limit, set a Target size instead of guessing. Re-running always starts from the file you dropped in, so nothing is lost by experimenting.
Can I get the selectable text back afterwards?
Not from the compressed file — the original text is gone once the page is an image. Keep your original, and if you need the words out of a scan, Image to Text can read them back with OCR.
My file came out larger. What went wrong?
Nothing broke. It means the original was already stored more efficiently than a page-sized JPEG, which is common for text-only documents. Try Strong, or accept that this particular PDF is about as small as it usefully gets.
Is there a size limit on the PDF I can compress?
There is no fixed limit, but the whole file is held in memory while it is processed. Very large documents are best handled on a desktop; on a phone, consider using Split PDF first and compressing the parts.