Compress PDF
Make a PDF smaller so it clears an upload limit or an email attachment cap — with three quality levels to choose from.
Drop a file here, or click to browse
A single PDF
How to compress a PDF
Drop a PDF above, pick a compression level, and press Compress. The tool reports the before and after size along with the percentage saved, so you can try a different level and compare before committing. Best quality re-renders pages at roughly twice their nominal resolution and is close to visually lossless; Balanced is the sensible default for most uploads; and Smallest pushes hardest when you have a strict limit to clear. Only when you are happy with the numbers do you press download.
What this tool is good at — and what it is not
Compression here works by rendering each page and re-encoding it as a JPEG, so it is very effective on the files that are usually too big in the first place: phone photos of documents, flatbed scans, brochures and anything image-heavy. A 12 MB scanned application can routinely come down to one or two megabytes. It is far less effective on a PDF that is already mostly text — a LaTeX paper or a Word export is small and efficient to begin with, and re-encoding it as images can even make it larger. The tool tells you honestly when there was no reduction rather than silently handing back a bigger file.
One consequence worth knowing: because pages become images, selectable text and copy-paste are lost in the output. If you need the text to stay searchable, compress a copy and keep the original, or run the file through PDF to Text first to save the contents separately.
Need a specific size?
If a portal demands something exact — under 200 KB, under 500 KB, under 1 MB — use the target-size compressors instead of guessing at a level here. They iterate automatically until the file fits the limit you name, which saves the trial-and-error. You will find them listed on the PDF Tools page.
Frequently asked questions
How much smaller will my PDF get?+
It depends entirely on what is inside. Scans and photo-heavy PDFs commonly shrink by 70–90%. A PDF that is mostly plain text may barely shrink at all, because text is already stored very efficiently. The tool shows you the exact before/after numbers before you download.
Will compressing reduce the quality?+
Yes — this is lossy compression. Each page is re-rendered and saved as a JPEG, so fine detail softens, especially at the "Smallest" level. "Best quality" is close to visually lossless for normal reading and printing. Try a level, check the result, and step down only as far as you need to.
Why does my compressed PDF say "No reduction"?+
Your PDF was already well optimised — usually because it is text-based rather than scanned. Converting that kind of page to an image makes it bigger, not smaller, so the tool tells you instead of pretending it worked. Keep the original in that case.
Can I still select and copy the text afterwards?+
No. Because pages are converted to images, the output has no selectable text layer. If you need the text, extract it first with the PDF to Text tool, or keep an uncompressed copy of the original.
Is my file uploaded to a server?+
No. Everything runs in your browser — the PDF is never sent anywhere, and we never hold a copy. No sign-up, no watermark, no daily limit.