Compress PDF
Make a document smaller, on this device.
Drop files here
Or paste them, or pick them from this device. Nothing is uploaded: the work happens in this tab.
Files in this tab
Nothing is loaded yet.
Options
You choose how much detail to keep.
Lower is smaller and blurrier. It applies to photographs and scans only — text and drawings are never re-encoded.
Advanced
Compress the file
Add a file to get started.
What this does
Almost all of the weight in a large PDF is pictures, so that is where compression works: images are re-encoded at a resolution and quality you choose, and a picture is only replaced when the new one is genuinely smaller. A document that is text and vector drawings is made smaller by tidying its structure, which is worth a few per cent rather than a few times — and the report says which it was.
What it will not do
Every tool here says what it cannot do, in its own words, before you rely on it.
- The savings are in the pictures. A document of text and vector drawings is made smaller by tidying its structure, which is worth a few per cent, not a few times.
- A picture is only replaced when the new one is genuinely smaller, so a diagram or a screenshot is left alone rather than turned to mush.
- Pictures stored with a palette, at one bit, with transparency, or as JPEG 2000, JBIG2 or CCITT fax are left as they are. The report says which, and why.
- A target size is aimed at, not promised. A document with nothing to give cannot reach one, and the report says whether it did.
- Embedded fonts are not subset yet, so a file whose bulk is a font will not shrink much.
- Re-encoding a picture drops its colour profile, so colours can shift very slightly on a colour-managed screen.
Questions people ask
How small will my file get?
It depends entirely on what is in it. A scanned document at 600 DPI can lose most of its weight; a text document has almost nothing to give. You can name a target size, and the report says whether it was reached.
Will my text get blurry?
No. Text is not an image and is never re-encoded. What changes is the photographs, and only where the smaller version is actually smaller.
Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No. The work happens in this browser tab, on your own machine. There is no server in this product to send a file to, which is why the promise is checkable rather than something you have to take on trust: open your browser's network panel and watch it do the work without making a request.
Is there a size limit, or a limit on how many files?
None that we impose. The limit is your own machine's memory, because that is where the work happens — a few hundred megabytes is comfortable on a laptop, and less on a phone. There is no daily task counter, no queue and no account.
What does it cost, and what is the catch?
Nothing, and there is no paid tier that unlocks features: the whole product is the free one. That is affordable because running it costs us nothing — your computer does the work — so there is no per-file cost to recover, no advertising and no data to sell.