PDF Compressor
Make a PDF smaller so it fits email and upload limits. Images inside the file are re-compressed while text stays sharp and selectable.
- Files stay on your device
- No sign-up
- Free to use
How to use PDF Compressor
- Drop your PDF onto the upload area or browse to select it.
- Keep Recommended mode to preserve selectable text, or choose Maximum for scanned documents.
- Pick a compression strength: Light, Balanced or Strong.
- Select Compress PDF, review how much was saved and download the smaller file.
PDF Compressor features
Text stays text
In Recommended mode only embedded photos are re-compressed; fonts, text and vector artwork are left exactly as they were.
Three strength levels
Light favours quality, Strong favours size, and Balanced sits between them.
Maximum mode for scans
Flatten each page to an optimised image when a document is made of scans and needs the biggest reduction.
Honest results
You see the before and after size, and if the file cannot be made smaller you get the original back.
Runs locally
The PDF is compressed inside your browser, so confidential documents are not uploaded.
When to use PDF Compressor
- Getting a scanned contract under a 10 MB email attachment limit.
- Meeting the upload size cap on a visa, tax or job application portal.
- Reducing storage and download time for PDFs published on a website.
- Sharing a photo-heavy presentation export over a messaging app.
PDF Compressor FAQ
How much can a PDF be compressed?
It depends on what is inside. Documents full of photos or scans often shrink by 50–90%. A text-only PDF has little to remove and may shrink by only a few percent.
Will the text still be selectable and searchable?
Yes in Recommended mode, which changes only images. Maximum mode converts each page to a picture, so text can no longer be selected or searched.
Why did my file barely get smaller?
Either it contains mostly text and vector graphics, which are already compact, or its images are in a format other than JPEG or were already heavily compressed. Try the Strong level, or Maximum mode for scans.
Does compression affect print quality?
Light keeps images detailed enough for normal printing. Balanced and Strong lower image resolution and are intended for on-screen reading.
Is the PDF uploaded?
No. All processing happens in your browser on your own device.
What makes a PDF large
In most oversized PDFs, images account for nearly all of the bytes. A single page scanned at 300 DPI can hold several megabytes of pixel data, whereas the same page stored as text and fonts is a few kilobytes. Effective compression therefore means finding the images, lowering their resolution to what a screen actually needs, and encoding them with stronger JPEG compression.
This tool does that in place: it locates JPEG image streams inside the document, re-encodes each at the chosen quality and maximum dimension, and writes the file back with its internal structure packed into compressed object streams. Everything that is not an image is carried over unchanged, so the layout, fonts and links are preserved.
Maximum mode takes a blunter approach suited to scans: every page is drawn at a modest resolution and saved as one image. It is the most reliable way to shrink documents that are already just pictures of paper, at the cost of losing live text.