Compress PDF
PDF → PDF (smaller)Aim at a size limit — set the target and it works backwards to hit it.
1 · PDF
Is this PDF password-protected?
Used once, in this tab, to decrypt the file. It is never sent anywhere.
2 · How small, and at what cost
Pages are re-rendered as images. Reliable for scans and heavy graphics; the text stops being selectable.
Aiming for 2.0 MB or less.
3 · Result
About Compress PDF
Almost nobody wants a "smaller" PDF in the abstract. They want it under 2 MB because a recruitment portal, HR system or e-procurement site refuses anything bigger. So this tool takes the number instead of a vague quality slider: name the size and it measures a few pages, works out the settings that will land there, and checks its own result.
How it works
- 1Pick the PDF you need to shrink.
- 2Type the target size — 2 MB, 800 KB, whatever the form demands.
- 3Press Compress PDF. The before-and-after size is shown, and the file downloads.
Questions
- How do I get a PDF under 1 MB or 2 MB exactly?
- Type that figure into the target size box and let it work backwards. It renders a few sample pages to learn how many bytes a page costs, picks a resolution and quality that should fit, then renders the whole document and tries once more at a lower setting if it overshot. If even the most aggressive setting cannot reach your figure, it says so rather than handing back a file that misses the limit silently.
- Why is the text no longer selectable after compressing?
- The mode that reliably reaches a size target re-renders each page as a JPEG image, which is what makes scans and graphics-heavy files collapse in size. A picture of text is not text, so it can no longer be selected, copied or searched. When keeping the text layer matters more than the size, choose “Tidy the file structure only” — it is lossless, but usually saves only a few percent.
- How much smaller can it get?
- It depends entirely on what is inside. Scanned documents and photo-heavy files routinely drop by 80–95%, because their bulk is image data that can be re-encoded. A PDF that is only text and vector graphics is already small and efficiently packed, and will barely move — there is nothing to squeeze.
- Should I use greyscale?
- Yes, if the content is black text on white paper and the colour is only scanner noise. It typically removes about a third of what remains. Do not use it for anything where colour carries meaning — stamps, signatures in blue ink, charts, photographs.
- Is there a file size limit?
- No server limit, because nothing is uploaded. The constraint is your device’s memory: each page is rendered to a bitmap in turn, so a several-hundred-page scan at high resolution can exhaust a phone. If it fails, try a lower resolution, or split the document first and compress the parts.
- Is my PDF uploaded in order to compress it?
- No. The conversion runs in your browser using JavaScript and WebAssembly — the file is read into this tab’s memory and written back out there. The site is served as static files from Cloudflare’s edge and has no upload endpoint, no database and no server-side processing. The page ships a Content Security Policy that forbids it from contacting any host other than its own origin, so this is enforced by your browser rather than promised by us.
Next you might need
This page does the work itself, in this tab. Nothing about your file — not its name, not its contents — is sent to a server. Close the tab and no copy remains.