Compress a PDF
Shrink scanned or photo-heavy PDFs so they are easier to email or upload. Compression works by re-rendering each page as an image.
Drop a PDF here
Files stay on your device.
How it works
- Add a PDF.
- Choose a quality level.
- Compress, compare sizes and download.
How compression works here
This tool re-draws every page as an image and rebuilds the PDF from those images. That can shrink scanned documents and photo-heavy files a lot, but text is no longer selectable or searchable afterwards.
Choose a quality level
- Low: the smallest file. Pages are drawn at about 72 dpi and can look soft, which is fine for reading on a screen.
- Medium: about 108 dpi, a balance that suits most email attachments.
- High: about 144 dpi with lighter compression, better when the text is small.
When it helps and when it does not
Scans and photo PDFs shrink the most. PDFs created from Word or a design app already store text efficiently, so re-drawing them as images can make the file bigger. The tool shows the size before and after, and if the new file is not smaller you should keep the original.
Before you send it
Open the compressed PDF and read a page or two to check that small text is still legible. Keep the original if you might need selectable text later. If a site has an upload limit, try Medium first and then Low.
Questions
- Is it free?
- Yes. There is no watermark, no signup and no daily limit for normal use.
- Are my files uploaded?
- No. Everything runs in your browser, so your PDFs never leave your device.
- Why does the text become unselectable?
- Pages are converted to images to reduce size, so selectable text is lost. Use this for scans. For text-based PDFs the result may not be smaller.
- What if the file gets bigger?
- That means the PDF is already efficient. The tool shows both sizes so you can keep the original.
- Why is my compressed PDF bigger?
- The PDF was probably already efficient, for example text and vector graphics. Re-drawing pages as images can then increase the size. Keep the original in that case.
- Can I compress without losing selectable text?
- Not with this tool, because it converts pages to images. A desktop PDF editor can compress the images inside a PDF while keeping the text.