Compress PDF
Reduce PDF file size while keeping your document readable and usable.
Drop your PDF here
or
Everything runs in your browser — your file is never uploaded.
Honest compression, in your browser
PDF compression is often oversold. A file made of text and vector graphics is usually already tightly packed, so the only real saving is stripping metadata and repacking it — that is what Recommended does, and it never harms your document. The dramatic reductions people expect come from image-heavy scans, where re-encoding the pictures at a lower resolution genuinely helps. We show you the exact original size, the exact new size and the true percentage, and if a mode fails to shrink the file we say so.
Compression questions
How much smaller will my PDF get?
It depends entirely on the file. Recommended mode only strips waste and repacks the file, so a well-made PDF may barely shrink. Image-heavy scans usually shrink a lot in Strong or Maximum mode. We always show the real numbers, and if a mode makes the file bigger we tell you instead of pretending it worked.
Does compression reduce quality?
Recommended mode does not — it never touches page content, so text, images and searchability are unchanged. Strong and Maximum re-render each page as a JPEG image, which shrinks scans considerably but reduces image detail and removes selectable text.
Why is my text no longer selectable?
That happens only in Strong, Maximum or Custom rasterising modes, which convert pages to images. Use Recommended if you need the text layer preserved.
Is my file uploaded for compression?
No. All compression runs on your device inside your browser. There is no server-side processing and no temporary copy stored anywhere.
What if nothing gets smaller?
Some PDFs are already optimised. If no mode produces a smaller file, keep your original — we will say so rather than hand you a larger file and call it compressed.