Shrink a PDF so it fits an email or an upload limit. Preview the effect on any page before committing, choose a level, or set a maximum size in megabytes.
Drop your PDF here
or click to browse · PDF only · max 60 MB
Compression always trades detail for size. The preview renders each page exactly as the output will look, so you can page through and judge it rather than downloading and hoping.
If a portal caps uploads at 2 MB, enter 2 MB. The tool tries progressively stronger settings until it fits, instead of leaving you to guess at a slider.
Compression usually means a document is being sent somewhere. Doing it locally means the file is not sitting on a third-party server first.
Step by step
Drag the file onto the box or click to browse. The first page appears as a preview.
Balanced suits most documents. Light preserves more detail, Strong produces the smallest file. Custom gives you the resolution and quality sliders directly.
Page through the document. What you see is exactly what the compressed file will contain, including the effect of greyscale if you enable it.
Press estimate to see the resulting size without saving, or compress and download when the balance looks right.
FAQ
Each page is rendered at the resolution you choose and re-encoded as a JPEG image inside a new PDF. This is very effective on scanned documents and image-heavy files, which are usually the ones that are too large in the first place.
No. Because pages are rebuilt as images, the text layer is not preserved. The document looks and prints identically, but you cannot select or search the text. For a text-only PDF that is already small, compression is rarely worth this trade.
If the file is mostly text with few images, it is already efficiently stored and there is little to remove. Compression pays off on scans, photographs and presentations, not on a text document exported from Word.
It removes colour information, which typically halves the size of a scanned text document with no loss of legibility. It is the single most effective option for scanned paperwork.
150 DPI is the usual sweet spot for documents that will be read on screen or printed casually. 200 to 300 DPI is better for anything with fine print. Below 110 DPI, small text starts to break down.
The tool compresses at your settings, measures the result, and if it is still too large, retries with progressively lower resolution and quality. Three attempts are made before returning the smallest result achieved.
No. The PDF is rendered and rebuilt entirely inside your browser, so nothing is transmitted at any point.
This tool lets you compress a PDF online to reduce its file size for email attachments, upload forms and portals with a size cap. Four levels cover the usual cases, and a custom mode exposes resolution and image quality directly.
What makes the difference here is the preview. Compression is always a trade between file size and visual detail, and most tools ask you to accept that trade blind. Every page is rendered exactly as the output will appear, so you can move through the document and confirm that small print is still legible before downloading anything.
For scanned documents, the greyscale option is usually the most effective single change, often halving the size with no loss of readability because colour information contributes nothing to a page of black text. Resolution matters next: 150 DPI is comfortable for screen reading and casual printing, while anything with fine detail benefits from 200 or more.
If a specific limit is what you actually need, enter a maximum size in megabytes and the tool compresses, measures, and retries with stronger settings until the result fits underneath. One consequence is worth stating clearly: because pages are rebuilt as images, the text layer is not preserved, so the output is not selectable or searchable. That is a fair trade for a scan, and rarely worth it for a small text document.
Related tools include the PDF merger, the PDF splitter, the image to PDF converter, and the image compressor for shrinking photographs before they go into a document.