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Compress PDF

Reduce file size while optimizing for maximal PDF quality.

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PDF or image files supported

Compress PDF: shrink file size without breaking your document

Reduce PDF size for email, upload limits and web publishing — with clear control over quality.

Compress PDF makes a PDF smaller so it fits under email attachment limits, uploads faster, and takes less bandwidth to share. Under the hood we use Ghostscript to re-encode embedded images at a lower resolution and to remove redundant metadata.

You choose the level of compression — light, medium or high. Light retains near-original visual quality and gives a modest size reduction; high gets the smallest file at the cost of noticeably softer images. Text stays crisp at every level.

How to use it

  1. 1Upload the PDF you want to compress.
  2. 2Choose a compression level: light (best quality), medium (balanced), or high (smallest file).
  3. 3Press Compress. The compressed file downloads when ready — the toast shows how many megabytes were saved.
  4. 4If the result is not small enough, run Compress again with a higher level, or reduce the source images before creating the PDF.

Real-world use cases

  • Email limits: shrink a 25 MB scan under the common 10 MB or 20 MB Gmail limit.
  • Upload portals: pass file-size caps on government or university submission forms.
  • Web publishing: reduce catalogue and brochure sizes before publishing them online.
  • Archive photos of documents: keep an archive-friendly PDF that is still readable but much smaller.

Supported formats & limits

Input: any PDF. Output: a compressed PDF. Note that a PDF containing only text is usually already small — compression is most effective on PDFs with large images or scans.

Privacy

Your uploaded file is written to a temporary folder on our server, processed, and deleted by the operating system as soon as the request finishes — typically within seconds. Nothing is stored in our database. Traffic is encrypted over HTTPS.

Full details in the Privacy Policy.

Frequently asked questions

Will Compress PDF affect the text?▾

No — text remains selectable and searchable. Only images inside the PDF are re-encoded, plus embedded fonts are subset when possible.

How much smaller will my file be?▾

It depends on the input. PDFs that are mostly text usually shrink 10–30 %. PDFs with photos or scans often shrink 50–80 % at the medium setting.

Can I compress an already-compressed PDF further?▾

You can try, but the returns diminish. If the file is already small it may not shrink meaningfully.

Is high compression lossless?▾

No — high compression is lossy for images. Use light if visual fidelity matters (e.g. archival scans).

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