Compress PDF

A PDF is nearly always too big because of the pictures inside it, usually scans saved at far more detail than anyone will ever look at. This shrinks those, clears out anything unused, and leaves the text alone so it stays sharp and still searchable.

How to use it

1 Add the PDF you want to shrink.
2 Choose how hard to compress, which sets how much detail the pictures keep.
3 Check the preview on a page that contains photographs or a scan.
4 Download the smaller document.

Formats this tool accepts

Each one has a reference page covering what it stores and where it is supported.

PDF Portable Document Format

Questions about compress pdf

Will the text stay sharp?

Yes. Text and vector graphics are stored as instructions rather than pixels and are not touched by compression, so they render sharply at any zoom. Only embedded raster images are downsampled.

Why did my PDF barely get smaller?

Because it was mostly text to begin with. A text-only PDF has very little to remove, and its size comes from embedded fonts. Large savings come from documents built out of scans or photographs.

What resolution should scans be?

150 dots per inch is comfortable for reading on screen and is a large saving over a 300 or 600 dpi scan. Keep 300 if the document will be printed or run through character recognition later.

Are my files uploaded to a server?

No. The whole thing runs inside the browser tab you already have open. Your file is read straight from your own disk, worked on there, and handed back as a download. Nothing is sent anywhere, nothing is stored, and there is no account and no queue.

Is there a file size limit?

There is no server-side limit because there is no server. The practical ceiling is your device memory, since the file and its output both have to fit in the tab. Files up to a few hundred megabytes are usually fine on a desktop machine, while phones and older laptops will struggle sooner. If a large file fails, close other tabs and try again.

Does it work offline?

Yes, once the page has loaded once. The engine is cached by the browser, so you can turn off your connection, reload the page and keep working. That is a useful side effect of doing the processing locally rather than a separate offline mode you have to enable.