Compress a PDF to reduce its file size
Shrink a PDF so it fits an email attachment limit or a website upload form. You choose how aggressive to be: light compression keeps text selectable, strong compression trades some sharpness for a much smaller file.
Everything runs on your device. If the result would be larger than the original, you get the original back instead of a worse file.
How to compress PDF in 3 steps
- Choose your PDF.
- Pick Light or Strong compression. For Strong, choose an image quality and resolution.
- Press Compress PDF, check the new size and download.
Light versus strong compression
Light compression re-saves the PDF with a more compact internal structure. Text, vectors and links stay intact, but the saving is usually small, often only a few percent.
Strong compression renders every page to an image and rebuilds the PDF from those images. It can cut scan-heavy or photo-heavy files by 70 to 90 percent, but text is no longer selectable or searchable in the result.
Getting under a size limit
For email, aim for 110 dpi at medium quality: it stays readable on screen and is typically a fraction of the original size. For documents that will be printed, use 150 dpi. If the file is still too big, split it into parts and send them separately.
Text-only PDFs are already small. If a document of a few hundred kilobytes will not shrink, that is expected.
Private by design
Compress PDF runs as code inside your browser tab. The file you choose is read from your device and the result is built on your device, so it is not sent to our servers or anyone else's. You can confirm this by watching the Network tab in your browser's developer tools while you use the tool.
Frequently asked questions
How do I compress a PDF without losing quality?
Use Light compression. It does not touch the page content, so there is no quality loss, but the saving is modest. Strong compression always reduces image quality to some degree.
Why is my compressed PDF not selectable text anymore?
Strong compression converts pages to images. Use Light compression if you need to keep searchable text.
Why did the file not get smaller?
Some PDFs are already optimized. In that case the tool returns the original rather than a bigger file.
Is my document uploaded?
No. Compression runs entirely in your browser.