Reduce a PDF's file size by re-saving its photos at a sensible resolution and packing its structure tighter, and see the before and after size before you download. The PDF is compressed on your device: it's never uploaded, and there's no file-size limit, daily cap or sign-up.
How to use Compress PDF
Choose a PDF to compress.
Pick a Compression level: Lossless, Recommended or Extreme (see the table below), or Target size to get under a limit such as 200 KB.
Click Compress PDF, or Compress to the size you picked.
Compare the before and after sizes and click Download PDF.
Frequently asked questions
Does compressing a PDF reduce quality?
Lossless doesn't change how anything looks. Recommended re-saves photos as JPEGs at up to about 150 dpi, which stays sharp on screen and in office printing; text, fonts and vector drawings aren't touched. Extreme turns every page into an image, so text can no longer be selected or searched.
How can I make a PDF smaller for email or an upload portal?
Pick Target size and choose the portal's limit. The tool finds the best quality that fits, keeping text selectable when it can, and shows the exact size in bytes. A long document can also be split into parts that each fit the limit.
Can I compress a PDF to an exact size, like 200 KB?
Yes. Choose Target size and pick 100 KB, 200 KB, 500 KB or 1 MB, or type your own size; 1 KB counts as 1,000 bytes. It tries the gentlest settings first and tells you plainly if even the smallest one can't reach the target. There are ready-set pages to compress a PDF to 100 KB, 200 KB, 500 KB and 1 MB.
Why is my PDF so big?
Usually because it holds photos or scans saved at print resolution or higher, fonts embedded in full, or images stored more than once. Recommended deals with large photos and Lossless removes unused and duplicate data. A text-only PDF is often already about as small as it gets.
Why didn't my PDF get any smaller?
Some PDFs are already well compressed, and Recommended skips images it can't safely re-encode, such as CMYK images and images with transparency masks. If a level can't make the file smaller you get the original back, and you can try a stronger level.
Does compression keep links, bookmarks, forms and digital signatures?
Lossless and Recommended keep links, bookmarks and form fields. Any re-save of a signed PDF, including Lossless, breaks its digital signature, so compress before signing, not after. Extreme rebuilds every page as a picture, so links, bookmarks, form fields and selectable text are lost.
Can I compress a scanned PDF?
Yes. A scan is a set of page images, so Recommended usually shrinks it a lot. If you use Extreme, run OCR PDF on the result to make the text searchable again.
Can I compress a password-protected PDF?
Not while it's encrypted. Remove the password with Unlock PDF first, compress the unlocked copy, and protect it again with Protect PDF if needed.
Is it safe to compress a PDF online here?
Yes. The PDF is compressed in your browser with qpdf and pdf-lib running locally, so it is never uploaded.
The three compression levels
Level
What it does
Text selectable
Best for
Lossless
Packs objects into compressed streams at maximum Flate compression and drops unused resources. Nothing visible changes.
Yes
Text-heavy PDFs and files you can't let change
Recommended
Lossless, plus photos re-saved as JPEG at 72% quality and scaled down to about 150 dpi for the page size (at most 2,000 px on the long side). An image is only replaced when the new one is smaller.
Yes
Email, uploads and everyday sharing
Extreme
Every page redrawn as one image at 110 dpi, JPEG at 60% quality.
No
The smallest possible file, when text search doesn't matter
Target size
Lossless first, then photos re-saved from 150 dpi down to 60 dpi, then, only if needed, pages as images from 150 dpi down to 50 dpi, stopping at the highest setting that fits.
Yes, unless pages had to become images
Upload forms with a KB or MB limit
Compressing for Indian form uploads
Exam, scholarship, job and government portals often cap each PDF at a few hundred KB. Check the portal's own notice for its exact limit, choose Target size and enter it, and compare the exact byte count shown here with the limit before uploading. The compress PDF to 200 KB and 100 KB pages open with those targets already picked.