Compress a PDF to a target size
Shrink a PDF to fit an email or an upload limit. Choose a compression level, or a target such as 200 KB or 1 MB and let the tool find the best quality that fits. Each page keeps its original paper size. The file is processed in your browser and never uploaded, which matters for ID scans, payslips and contracts.
How it works, and what that means for your file
The compressor renders each page as an image at the resolution you choose, saves it as a JPEG, and builds a new PDF from those images. Scanned documents and image-heavy PDFs often shrink dramatically, because scanners commonly save pages at 300 to 600 dots per inch, far more than anyone needs to read a page on screen.
The same method has two consequences you should know before you start:
- Text stops being selectable. Every page becomes a picture, so you cannot search or copy text in the result, and any hidden text layer from OCR is lost.
- Text-only PDFs may grow. A document typed in Word is already small, because it stores text and fonts rather than pictures of them. If the result is not smaller, the tool tells you to keep the original.
The levels, in resolution terms
- High quality renders pages at about 144 DPI. Comfortable to read on screen and acceptable when printed.
- Balanced uses about 108 DPI, a good default for documents that will be read on screen.
- Smallest uses 72 DPI. Fine for a quick reference copy, but small print gets hard to read.
In target size mode the tool starts at Balanced and steps down in resolution and quality until the file fits. If even the lowest step is too big, it shows you the smallest version and suggests splitting the document instead.
Hitting an upload limit
Gmail and Outlook.com both cap a whole email at 25 MB. Job, university and government portals often allow only 1 or 2 MB per file, sometimes as little as a few hundred kilobytes. Three approaches, in order of preference:
- Remove pages the portal does not need with Split PDF. Nothing loses quality.
- If the portal accepts several files, split the document into parts under the limit.
- Compress what remains with a target size here.
If you need text to stay selectable
For documents you created yourself, exporting again from the original program with a smaller image setting usually works better than compressing the PDF afterwards. Word's Save As PDF has a Minimum size option, and on a Mac, Preview's Export command offers a Reduce File Size filter. Both keep text as text.