Compress a PDF file

How to compress a PDF

• Choose a PDF file.
• Pick a mode: “Strong” or “Light” (explained below). For Strong you can also set the quality and grayscale.
• Click “Compress”, compare the sizes and download the result.

Two modes and their trade-offs

Browsers cannot re-compress images that are already embedded in a PDF, so this tool offers two honest approaches.

Strong (images): every page is rendered as a picture (72, 110 or 150 DPI), compressed as JPEG and put into a new PDF with the same page sizes. This often makes the file much smaller, but text can no longer be selected or searched, and links and forms are lost. It suits scanned documents and photos.

Light (keep text): metadata is removed and the file is rewritten more efficiently. It typically saves only a few percent, but text, links and forms stay intact.

Tips

• If the result is not smaller than the original, the tool says so and offers the original or the other mode instead.
• A PDF with a lot of text and few images can even grow after strong compression.
• Files over 100 MB or 300 pages may be too heavy for a phone.

Privacy

All processing happens in your browser. The document is not uploaded, and password-protected PDFs are not accepted.