Compress PDF

Reduce PDF file size while maintaining quality.

Drop the PDF you want to compress

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Compression Complete!

How to compress a PDF

  1. Drop your PDF in the zone above. A "before" size is shown so you can compare after compression.
  2. Pick a compression level — High keeps nearly perfect quality with mild savings, Balanced trades a little image sharpness for ~30–60% smaller files, Maximum aggressively downsamples images for the smallest output.
  3. Click Compress PDF. The tool re-encodes embedded images as JPEG at the chosen quality and rebuilds the PDF. You get a download link with the new size shown next to the original.

What actually gets smaller

In most real-world PDFs, 80–95% of the file size is embedded images — scanned pages, screenshots, product photos. Compression focuses there. Text and vector content is already efficient and is left alone. If your PDF is pure text, expect only a small reduction — there is no fat to trim.

Frequently asked

Why did my PDF barely get smaller?

It probably already has compressed images. PDFs exported from modern Office apps or web services are often close to optimal. The biggest wins come from scans and phone-captured documents.

Will compression affect image readability?

Balanced mode keeps images sharp for on-screen reading and normal printing — the default most people want. Maximum compression is tuned for email and archive workflows, where smaller file size matters more than photo-grade fidelity. Either way, the original PDF stays untouched on your device, so you can recompress at a different setting in seconds if the first pass is not what you wanted.

Is this lossless?

Compression at meaningful ratios re-encodes images as JPEG, which is lossy by design — that's the trade-off that delivers 60-90% smaller files. Your original PDF stays untouched on your device, so when bit-perfect is essential, keep both copies side-by-side. Use the compressed copy for sharing, the original for archival.

Can I compress scanned multi-page contracts?

Yes — scans are the best case. A 40 MB scanned contract often shrinks below 5 MB at Balanced quality.

Privacy: Every byte of your PDF stays in your browser. Compression runs locally with PDF.js and pdf-lib. No uploads, no copies.