Compress PDF
Shrink a big PDF so it fits an email or upload limit.
Whichever setting you pick, you never get a file bigger than the one you started with.
Choose a file
Drag and drop, or click to browse
Options
Processed and handed straight back. Nothing is written to disk.
About compress pdf
Compressing makes a PDF smaller so it fits an email attachment limit or a portal upload cap. The tool first removes waste losslessly — duplicated objects, unused data and unsubsetted fonts — then, at the medium and strong settings, reduces the resolution of any images inside the file.
It always compares the results and returns whichever is smallest, so a stronger setting can never hand you back a bigger file than a lighter one would have, and you never receive a file larger than the one you uploaded.
Scanned documents shrink the most, often by 80–95%, because the pages are photographs. A PDF that is mostly typed text is already small and may barely change — that is normal, not a failure.
Questions about compress pdf
Which setting should I use?
Medium suits almost everything. Use Light when the images must stay pristine, such as artwork or a document for print. Use Strong when you have to get under a hard size limit and slightly softer images are acceptable.
Why did my PDF barely get smaller?
It was probably already efficient. Text-only PDFs contain very little data to remove. The big savings come from photographs and scans, where reducing image resolution has something to work with.
Does compressing lose quality?
Light is completely lossless. Medium and Strong reduce image resolution, so photographs become softer — text always stays sharp and selectable because it is never converted to an image.
How small can a scanned PDF get?
In testing, a scanned document dropped by about 93% at the Strong setting while staying perfectly readable on screen.