Compress PDF

Reduce a PDF to fit an upload limit without turning the text unreadable.

Free, no sign-up, no watermark — and this tool runs entirely in your browser, so your file never leaves your device.

Choose a PDF

or drag it here

How hard to squeeze

Target size (KB) — optional

Given a target, it retries at lower settings until it fits.

Colour

How to use it

Choose the PDF.
Pick how hard to squeeze, or type the exact size the upload form allows.
Press Compress and compare the before and after.
If the text has gone soft, step back one level and try again.

Questions about this tool

How does it shrink the file?

Each page is redrawn at a lower resolution and re-encoded as a JPEG inside a new PDF. That is what makes a scanned document dramatically smaller.

Will the text still be selectable?

No. Compressing this way turns every page into a picture of itself, which is exactly why it shrinks so much. For a form that only needs to be read and printed, that is fine. If you need the text to stay searchable, do not compress — or run PDF OCR on the result afterwards.

It will not get small enough.

Choose "Maximum" and set a lower target. A 40-page colour scan will not reach 100 KB and still be legible; split it up with Remove PDF Pages.

Is it uploaded to a server?

No. Everything happens in your browser.

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