Compress PDF files online

Reduce PDF File Size Online

PDFs often end up larger than expected, especially when they contain high-resolution images, embedded fonts, or scanned pages. This tool shrinks your PDF by recompressing embedded images at a lower resolution, stripping out unused objects like form fields and annotations you don't need, and cleaning up the internal file structure. Text, links, and page layout stay intact — only the image quality changes.

How Much Smaller Will My PDF Get?

That depends entirely on what's inside it. A PDF made from scanned pages (essentially full-page images) can often shrink by 60–80% at the balanced setting. A text-heavy document with a few small charts might only shrink by 5–10%, since there's less image data to compress. If the tool produces a file that's nearly the same size as the original, it usually means the PDF was already well-optimized.

Choosing the Right Compression Level

The four settings control how aggressively embedded images are downsampled:

• Maximum compression (72 dpi) — produces the smallest files. Images will look fine on screen at normal zoom, but printing them will show noticeable blur. Good for email attachments, archival copies you'll never print, or documents where text matters more than photos.
• Balanced (150 dpi) — a solid middle ground. Images remain sharp enough for on-screen reading and casual printing. This is the default and works well for most everyday situations like sharing reports, invoices, or presentations.
• High quality (300 dpi) — suitable for documents that need to look good in print. Brochures, portfolios, or anything headed to a printer should use this setting. The file will still be smaller than the original because the tool optimizes the PDF structure even at this level.
• Minimal compression — leaves images essentially untouched and only optimizes the PDF's internal structure. Use this when you need to preserve every pixel — for example, with medical scans or archival documents.

Common Use Cases

• Shrinking a PDF to meet an upload size limit (e.g., email attachments, job applications, government forms).
• Reducing storage space for large collections of scanned documents.
• Making a presentation or report small enough to load quickly on a web page.
• Preparing documents for mobile viewing, where smaller files load faster on slower connections.

Tips

• If you only need certain pages, split the PDF first and compress just the pages you need.
• For PDFs created from photos, try JPG to PDF with pre-optimized images for better control over the final size.
• Need to trim white margins? Use Crop PDF after compressing.
• You can also merge multiple PDFs into one document.