Compress a PDF
Make a PDF smaller while keeping it readable.
Drop your file here
Processed securely and deleted within the hour.
Where the weight actually is
Open any oversized PDF and the culprit is almost always images. A scanned page is a photograph; a phone camera saves that photograph at a quality far beyond what a document needs. Text is nearly free by comparison — a hundred pages of it might be a few hundred kilobytes.
So compression here means finding every embedded image, re-encoding it at a sensible quality, and where the setting calls for it, reducing its resolution. Text, vectors and the document structure are left untouched, which is why the result stays searchable and selectable.
Choosing a level
- Low — visually lossless. Use it when the document will be printed or read closely.
- Recommended — the sensible default. Large reductions on scans, no visible change on screen.
- Strong and Extreme — for email attachment limits, where getting through matters more than looking perfect.
When nothing happens
If the file was already optimised, we return it unchanged rather than handing you a slightly different file and calling it a saving. A PDF exported from Word or LaTeX is usually already efficient; there is simply no image weight to remove.
If you have a hard limit
When a form demands a specific number, use Compress PDF to an exact size instead. It works backwards from your target rather than applying a fixed level and hoping.
Transparency is preserved
Images carrying a transparency mask are skipped rather than re-encoded, because JPEG cannot represent transparency and converting them would turn those areas black. It costs a little compression on those pages and avoids ruining them.
Common questions
Will the text stay searchable?
Yes. Only images are re-encoded; the text layer is untouched.
How much smaller will my file get?
Scans typically drop 70–90%. Text-only PDFs barely change, because there is nothing heavy to remove.
Why was my file returned unchanged?
Our best effort was no smaller than the original, so we gave you the original rather than a worse file dressed up as a saving.
Can I compress to a specific size?
Yes — use the exact-size tool, which works backwards from the number you need.
Is quality loss reversible?
No. Keep your original if you may need it at full quality later.
Are password-protected files supported?
Yes, if you supply the password. It is used to open the file and never stored.