PDF Compressor
Reduce the size of a PDF by recompressing its pictures while keeping the text, or go further by turning pages into images, without uploading the file.
PDF Compressor - Make a PDF Smaller Without Uploading It
Email attachments stop at 20 or 25 MB, and job portals, visa forms and university applications often accept no more than 1 or 2 MB. This tool makes a PDF smaller so it fits, and it does so in your browser: the document is never sent to a server.
Most of the weight in a large PDF is pictures: scanned pages, photos, screenshots. The tool rewrites those pictures at a sensible resolution and quality, and leaves the text alone, so the result still reads, prints and searches like the original.
How to use it
- Drop a PDF on the box, or click it to choose one.
- Keep Keep text (recommended), or choose Maximum for the smallest possible file.
- Pick the Compression level, or tick Aim for a file size and type a limit such as
1 MBor200 KB. - Press Compress. The tool shows the old and new size and how much was saved.
- Press Download PDF to save the smaller copy. The original file is not changed.
The two modes
| Keep text | Maximum | |
|---|---|---|
| What changes | Only the pictures inside the PDF are resized and recompressed | Every page is redrawn as one JPEG image |
| Text | Stays sharp, selectable and searchable | Becomes part of the picture; no longer selectable |
| Links, bookmarks, form fields | Kept | Lost |
| Typical saving | 50-90% on scans and photo-heavy files; little on text-only files | Large on almost any file |
| Best for | Almost everything | Scans that must fit a strict limit |
The three levels set how far the pictures are reduced. Low keeps pictures up to 2400 pixels on the long side, which is fine for print. Recommended keeps them up to 1600 pixels, plenty for reading on any screen. Strong goes down to 1100 pixels with lower JPEG quality, for files that only need to be legible.
Reaching a size limit
When a form says "maximum 1 MB", tick Aim for a file size and type the limit. The tool tries the gentlest settings first and stops at the first result that fits, so you get the best quality the limit allows. If keeping the text cannot get there, it moves on to turning the pages into images, and tells you so. A very long document may not fit a tiny limit such as 100 KB at all; you then get the smallest result it could make.
What the tool does not touch
- Text and fonts stay as they are in Keep text mode, so there is no blur on letters.
- Vector drawings, such as charts and diagrams from Office or design programs, are kept as vectors.
- CMYK and spot-colour pictures made for professional printing are left unchanged, because converting them would shift the colours.
- Password-protected PDFs are refused. Remove the protection in the program that created the file first, if the file is yours.
Besides the pictures, the tool also compresses any part of the file that was stored uncompressed, removes old copies of objects left behind when a PDF was edited and saved many times, and packs the file's structure more tightly. Those steps lose nothing.
Why it runs in the browser
PDFs that need shrinking are often the sensitive ones: a passport scan, a bank statement, a signed contract. Here the work is done by pdf-lib and pdf.js, two open-source libraries that run as JavaScript on your device. There is no upload, no queue and no copy of your document on anyone else's disk. A large scan does take memory, so for files over 100 MB a computer works better than a phone.
Related tools
To remove pages you do not need before compressing, or to split a long document into parts, use the PDF tools. To turn pages into separate images, use the PDF converter. To shrink photos before putting them into a PDF, use compress image, then image to PDF. The task pages open this tool ready for a common limit: compress PDF to 1 MB, compress PDF to 100 KB and reduce PDF size.