Compress PDF files in your browser
A PDF compressor that makes a PDF smaller without rasterising it. Scans and image-heavy documents shrink hardest, and pages, text and links are untouched.
or browse your device. Everything is processed on this device
No PDF to hand?
Create ZIP packs loose files or a folder into one archive in this tab. Text and CSV shrink; a batch of already-compressed PDFs mostly just becomes one download.
Create ZIPHow to compress a PDF
It stays in memory on your device. There is nowhere for it to be posted to.
72% at 1600px halves most scanned documents with no visible difference on screen.
Page count, text, links and form fields all survive intact.
What is a PDF, and why is yours so big?
A PDF is a description of a page rather than a picture of one. Adobe published the format in 1993 so a document would print identically everywhere, and it does that by carrying its own instructions: the text as text, the vector artwork as coordinates, the fonts embedded so the machine opening it does not need them installed, and any photographs as raster images sitting inside the file.
That structure is why file sizes vary so wildly. Text and vectors are astonishingly cheap, so a fifty page contract can be under 200KB. Images are not, and one full-resolution photograph can outweigh the entire text of the document it is illustrating. When a PDF is unexpectedly huge, the cause is almost always the pictures inside it, and most often a scanner or a phone scanning app that embedded a 12 megapixel photograph of every single page.
Which sets the ceiling on what compressing can achieve. This tool re-encodes the images and repacks the file, so an image-heavy scan can lose 40 to 80% and still read the same. A PDF that is genuinely mostly text has almost nothing to give up, and the honest answer there is a small saving rather than a large one. The alternative some tools reach for, flattening every page into one big picture, does shrink a text document, but it destroys selectable text, links and searchability in the process. We do not do that.
PDF compression FAQ
Is text still selectable afterwards?
Yes. Pages are never rasterised. Only the raster images embedded in them are recompressed, so text, links, bookmarks and form fields come through untouched.
Why did my PDF barely shrink?
Either it is mostly text, in which case there is little to remove beyond structural packing, or its images use a scanner codec we cannot decode in a browser. The result panel tells you exactly which images were left alone and why.
What can you not compress?
Scans from older fax machines and some document scanners. Browsers cannot read those images at all, so we leave them exactly as they are rather than risk damaging them. The result panel says when this has happened.
Can you handle password-protected PDFs?
Not yet. Encrypted files are detected and refused rather than silently written back broken.
Are there page or size limits?
None imposed by us. The ceiling is your device memory, and the page stays responsive even on a large document.
How do I compress a PDF to 1MB, or to 500KB?
Turn on "Compress to a target size" and type your figure. We re-run the document at progressively lower image quality until it fits, then stop at the best result that meets the target. If even the lowest setting cannot reach it, we tell you how close we got.
How do I stop someone editing a filled in form?
Turn on "Flatten form fields". The typed values are painted into the page and the interactive fields are removed, so the document reads exactly as it did but can no longer be changed. It is not reversible, so keep your original.
How do I compress a PDF on a Mac?
Preview can export at "Reduced File Size", but it downsamples everything to one fixed setting and often makes text pages look soft. This page runs in Safari or Chrome on the same machine, gives you control over the quality, and does not upload the document to do it.
How do I make a PDF smaller for email?
Most mail providers cap attachments at 20 to 25MB. Set a target of 10MB and you will clear every common limit with room to spare, usually with no visible difference on screen.
Does it add a watermark, or limit file size?
Neither. There is no server, no account and nothing to upsell, and the only ceiling on file size is your own device memory.
Does this remove EXIF, GPS and AI metadata?
Yes, with "Remove metadata" on, which is how the page arrives. The author, the producer, the creation and modification dates and the XMP packet all go, and so does any Content Credentials (C2PA) manifest, which a PDF attaches as a file rather than storing with the other metadata and which most strippers therefore miss. Files someone deliberately embedded are left alone: that is your content, not metadata. What no compressor can remove is a watermark written into the pixels themselves, such as the invisible marks some image generators add: those survive re-encoding here and everywhere else.
Related
Same format joins the queue. Anything else re-routes to its own tool.