Compress PDF
Genuinely shrink a PDF by recompressing its pages — all inside your browser, with no upload limit.
Runs in your browser — nothing is uploaded
Click to upload or drag and drop
Supports PDF files
Re-renders pages at ~110 DPI. Best for scans and image-heavy PDFs.
How Compress PDF Works
Almost all of a PDF's weight is its embedded images. Tools that simply re-save a document rewrite its internal object table and typically save only a few percent. This tool gives you both approaches and tells you exactly what each one achieved.
Lossless rewrites the file structure and leaves text fully selectable. Savings are modest — use it when the text layer matters more than size.
Balanced and Strong re-render each page at a lower resolution and re-encode it as JPEG, at roughly 110 and 80 DPI respectively. On scanned documents and image-heavy reports this routinely cuts file size by most of its bulk. The trade-off is real and worth stating plainly: the text becomes part of the image, so it is no longer selectable. Page dimensions are preserved, so printing is unaffected.
If a file cannot be made smaller, you will be told rather than handed a larger file. Already-optimised PDFs sometimes grow when re-encoded, and we would rather say so.
Privacy and size limits. Processing happens in this tab, so there is no upload, no queue, and none of the 25–100 MB caps that server-based compressors impose on free users.
Frequently asked questions
How much smaller will my PDF get?
It depends entirely on what is inside it. Scanned documents and image-heavy reports typically shrink dramatically, because almost all of their weight is photographic data. A text-only PDF is already compact and may barely change. The tool reports the exact before and after sizes.
What is the difference between the compression levels?
Lossless rewrites the file structure only and keeps text fully selectable, but saves little. Balanced and Strong re-render each page at roughly 110 and 80 DPI and re-encode them as JPEG, which produces far smaller files at the cost of making text part of the image rather than selectable.
Will compressing reduce the print quality?
Lossless mode does not affect quality at all. Balanced is suitable for normal office printing. Strong is best for screen viewing and email, where a visible softening is an acceptable trade for a much smaller file. Page dimensions are preserved in every mode, so nothing is rescaled.
Why did my file get bigger?
Some PDFs are already optimised, and re-encoding them adds rather than removes data. When that happens the tool tells you and declines to download the larger file instead of silently handing it over.
Are my files uploaded to a server?
No. Every tool here runs inside your browser tab using JavaScript and WebAssembly. Your file is read from disk into memory, processed on your own device, and the result is handed straight back to you. Nothing is transmitted, nothing is stored, and nothing is deleted afterwards because nothing ever arrived.