Compress PDF

Make a PDF smaller in your browser by shrinking its images. Text stays sharp and searchable. Free, no sign-up, no watermark, and the PDF is never uploaded.

Runs in your browser. Your files are never uploaded. How it works

Compress PDF makes a PDF file smaller by re-compressing the images inside it, right in your browser. Text and vector graphics are not touched, so the document stays sharp and searchable while the file size drops.

How to compress a PDF

  1. Click Choose a PDF or drop a PDF onto the page.
  2. Pick a compression level: Light, Recommended or Strong.
  3. Click Compress PDF. The smaller file downloads, and the page shows the size before and after.

If the result is not at least a few percent smaller, nothing is downloaded and the page tells you to keep the original.

Compression levels

Level Images are reduced to Best for
Light about 300 DPI, high JPG quality Printing, archiving
Recommended about 150 DPI, good JPG quality Reading on screen, sharing
Strong about 100 DPI, lower JPG quality Email attachments, upload limits

DPI values assume a normal page size such as A4 or Letter. Images that are already smaller than the limit keep their size and are only re-encoded if that clearly saves space.

What changes and what does not

Part of the PDF What happens
Photos and scanned pages Scaled down and saved as JPG at the chosen quality
Screenshots, charts, logos Usually kept lossless: images with large areas of flat colour are not turned into JPG
Text, fonts, vector drawings Unchanged
Links, bookmarks, form fields Unchanged
Transparency masks, CMYK, JPEG 2000 images Unchanged, to avoid colour shifts and halos

E-books are often smaller as EPUB: PDF to EPUB makes a reflowable book from a text PDF, and EPUB to PDF goes the other way.

Private by design

Your PDF is processed on your own device and never uploaded, so you can compress tax returns, ID scans and signed contracts without sending them to anyone. See how it works to check this yourself.

Frequently asked questions

Is my PDF uploaded?

No. The PDF is read, compressed and saved by your own browser. Nothing is sent to a server, so it is safe for contracts, statements and medical records.

How much smaller will my PDF get?

It depends on what is inside. Scans and PDFs full of photos often shrink by 50–90%. PDFs that are mostly text are already small, and the tool will tell you when it cannot make a file meaningfully smaller.

Will the text get blurry?

No. Only images are re-compressed. Text, vector drawings, links and form fields are copied unchanged, so text stays sharp, selectable and searchable.

Which compression level should I choose?

Recommended suits most documents read on screen. Light keeps images close to print quality. Strong gives the smallest file, for email attachments and upload limits, with visibly softer photos.

Why did my PDF not get smaller?

Some PDFs have no images, or their images are already compressed well. Some image types are left alone on purpose, such as transparency masks, CMYK print images, JPEG 2000 and black-and-white fax images, because re-encoding them could change how the page looks.

Can I compress a password-protected PDF?

Not yet. Remove the password in the app you normally use to open the file, then compress it here.

Related tools

Merge PDFCombine several PDF files into one document, in the order you choose.Split PDFExtract selected pages, split every page into its own file, or cut a PDF into ranges.JPG to PDFCombine JPG, PNG and other images into a single PDF, in the order you choose.PDF to JPGTurn every page of a PDF into a JPG or PNG image, one page or all at once.Add Page NumbersNumber PDF pages in the corner or centre, with formats like Page 1 of 9 and an option to skip the cover.Compare PDFFind what changed between two PDFs: text differences side by side, or a visual overlay of every page.