Compress a PDF
Shrink a PDF's file size — free, and everything happens in your browser.
Compression works by re-rendering each page as an image at your chosen quality, which is most effective on PDFs full of photos or scans. Text will no longer be selectable/searchable afterward — for a text-heavy document, compression may not help much (and can occasionally make it slightly larger).
Drop a PDF here, or choose a file
One file at a time.
Frequently asked questions
Will compressing reduce quality?
Yes, to some degree — the higher the compression level, the more visible the quality loss, especially in photos and scanned pages. Low compression keeps quality close to the original.
Will this help with a text-heavy PDF?
Not much. Compression works by re-rendering pages as images, which is most effective on photo- or scan-heavy PDFs. A PDF that's mostly text may shrink very little, or even grow slightly.
Is the compression done on a server?
No. The whole process — opening, compressing, and rebuilding the file — happens in your browser. Your PDF is never uploaded anywhere.
What's the difference between the compression levels?
Each level renders pages at a different resolution and image quality. Low keeps things closest to the original; High produces the smallest file but with more visible quality loss; Recommended is a balance of the two.
Is it free, with no limits?
Yes. No account, no page or file size limit enforced by the tool, and no watermark on the result.
How do I get my PDF under a specific size limit, like 25MB for email?
Try the Recommended level first and check the resulting file size. If it's still over your limit, re-run compression on that result using High — each pass re-renders the pages, so stacking two passes shrinks it further than one pass alone.