Compress PDF files
Reduce PDF file size in your browser — no uploads, no watermark.
Runs 100% in your browser
Pages are rasterized to images — selectable text and form fields become part of the picture. Best for
scans and image-heavy PDFs. Keep the original if you need editable text.
How to compress a PDF
- Open a PDF. Select the PDF you want to make smaller.
- Pick a quality. Choose Low, Medium or High. Lower means a smaller file and lower resolution.
- Compress and download. Click Compress to rebuild a smaller PDF in your browser and download it.
About compressing PDFs
Oversized PDFs bounce off email limits and clog shared drives — usually because they are full of high-resolution scans or photos. This compressor renders each page at a sensible screen resolution and re-encodes it as a JPEG inside a new PDF, which is the most dependable way to shrink image-heavy documents in a browser. The trade-off is that text is flattened into the image, so reach for it when a smaller file matters more than editable text. Everything runs locally with a bundled library — nothing is uploaded. To shrink individual photos before building a PDF, try the image compressor.
Frequently asked questions
- No. Compression runs entirely in your browser — each page is rendered and re-encoded locally. The file never leaves your device.
- Each page is rendered to an image at the resolution and quality you choose, then assembled into a new PDF. This is the most reliable way to shrink scanned and image-heavy PDFs in the browser.
- No. Because pages are rasterized to images, selectable text and form fields become part of the picture. Use a lower setting only when a smaller file matters more than copy-paste text.
- It depends on the original. Scanned documents and photo-heavy PDFs often shrink by 50–90%. A PDF that is already small text may not shrink much — or could grow, in which case keep the original.
- Start with Medium. Drop to Low for scans you only need to read on screen; choose High to keep more detail when print quality matters.