Compress a PDF
Make a PDF small enough to email or upload. Pick how hard to squeeze, or name a target size and let the tool step down until it fits.
- Free
- No signup
- Runs in your browser
- Nothing uploaded
or browse your device
Compress a PDF in three steps
- Add the PDFthe current file size is shown as soon as it opens.
- Choose a level, or a targetlight, balanced, maximum — or type something like 500KB.
- Compare and downloadthe result tells you exactly how much came off.
What you get
Aim at a number
Upload forms that cap files at 2MB don't care about quality settings. Name the ceiling and the tool works down to it.
Honest about the trade
Compression here rebuilds pages as images. You get the size, and the result says plainly what that costs.
No round trip
A 40MB file isn't uploaded and downloaded again. It's processed where it already is.
Why PDFs get large in the first place
Almost always, it's images. A page of text weighs a few kilobytes; a single photo pasted in at phone-camera resolution can weigh four megabytes on its own. Scanners are the other culprit — many default to 600 DPI color even for a black-and-white form, which produces files ten times larger than the job needs.
Embedded fonts add a fixed overhead, usually a few hundred kilobytes, and they don't grow with page count. If a two-page PDF is 30MB, the fonts aren't the problem.
Compressing for upload limits
Government portals, university submission systems and job boards commonly cap uploads at 100KB, 200KB, 1MB or 2MB. These limits are rarely negotiable and rarely explained. Setting a target size is faster than guessing at a quality slider and re-checking.
If a document has to hit a hard limit and still be readable, reduce the page count first. Removing an appendix you weren't asked for does more for file size than any compression setting.
Limits and formats
| Levels | Light, balanced, maximum |
|---|---|
| Target sizes | Optional, written as 200KB or 1.5MB |
| Method | Pages re-rendered and JPEG-encoded |
| Text after compression | Becomes part of the page image — no longer selectable |
Common questions
Why is my compressed file no longer searchable?
Because this method rebuilds every page as an image, which is what makes big reductions possible. If you need the text to stay selectable, compress lightly and keep the original alongside the compressed copy.
Why didn't my file get smaller?
Some PDFs are already efficiently compressed — files exported straight from design software often are. When the result would be larger than the original, the tool says so and you should keep the original.
What's the smallest I can go?
It depends on the pages. Text documents survive aggressive compression well. Photo-heavy pages hit a wall where further squeezing produces visible blocks.
Is there a file size limit?
No imposed limit. Very large files are limited by your device's memory — a 200MB scan may struggle on a phone but is fine on a laptop.
Does compressing remove metadata?
The rebuild drops most document properties. If you want specific metadata retained, set it again afterwards with the metadata editor.
What people do around this step
From phone photos to a filed document
- Convert JPG to PDFgather the shots into one document, in page order
- Rotate PDF pagesstraighten anything that came in sideways
- Compress a PDFYou are here · bring the weight down before sending it
Circulating a deck
- Add a watermark to a PDFmark it as draft or confidential across every slide
- Compress a PDFYou are here · get it small enough for an inbox
Preparing a signed copy to send
- Sign a PDFdraw or type your signature onto the page
- Add a watermark to a PDFmark the status so a draft is not mistaken for final
- Compress a PDFYou are here · bring the weight down before emailing it