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Compress

Compress PDF — reduce PDF size to any limit, free

Shrink a PDF to whatever the form asks: 2 MB for a job portal, 200 KB for an online form, 25 MB for Gmail. Type the limit and the PDF is shrunk just enough, on your own device.

Where is this PDF going?

Settings appear once you add a PDF.

Compress by
Level
Advanced 1
Flatten pages if that’s the only way to hit the target Turns pages into images. Always reaches small sizes, but text won’t be selectable or searchable.

Done on your device No upload, no queue, no sign-up.

Bytes sent anywhere: 0 B

How to compress a PDF to any size

Your PDF goes into this browser tab, is compressed on your device, and comes back as a smaller PDF. 0 bytes uploaded

  1. Add your PDFs

    Drop your PDF — a CV, a scanned document, an application form.

  2. Check the settings

    Pick the limit (Job portal 2 MB, Online form 200 KB…) or type your own.

  3. Save the result

    We recompress the images inside the PDF, keeping text sharp and selectable. Only if that isn’t enough do we flatten pages — and we tell you.

Why it doesn’t upload

The PDFs people shrink most are the most sensitive: CVs, bank statements, passports, medical records. Online compressors store them on their servers. This one processes the PDF in your browser tab and never sends it anywhere.

Check it in your browser’s Network tab

Worth knowing

  • PDFs that are mostly text and fonts are already small; there’s little to remove without flattening pages.
  • Password-protected PDFs need to be unlocked first.
  • Flattened pages look the same but text can’t be selected, searched or copied — keep the original if you’ll need that.
  • Images in CMYK or unusual color spaces (common in print-ready files) are left untouched.
  • Very large PDFs are held in memory while processing; on phones, files over ~200 MB may fail.
  • This compresses PDFs only. For photos, video and audio, our sister site FixMyFiles does the same — to a size you type, with nothing uploaded.

Under the hood

What happens to your file

Compression works on the images, which are where a PDF’s size lives: each is decoded, downscaled if it is more detailed than it will ever be viewed, and re-encoded with MozJPEG. Text, vector drawings, links, bookmarks and form fields are left as they were. For a target size the tool binary-searches the quality levels, and only flattens pages to images if you allowed it and nothing else gets there.

Runs on pdf-libpdf.jsMozJPEG

Reference: ISO 32000-2 (PDF 2.0)

Questions

How do I compress a PDF to under 2 MB?

Choose Job portal · 2 MB (or type 2 MB), drop the PDF and press Compress. We try the gentlest settings first and stop at the first one that fits — so you keep as much quality as possible.

Can I compress a large PDF for free?

Yes, and large is where it helps most. There is no file-size cap and no daily limit: a big scanned PDF of 100 MB or more is compressed on your own device, so it is limited only by its memory. Scans usually shrink by 70–90%, because they are photographs stored at more detail than a page needs.

Will my text become blurry?

No — in the normal mode we only recompress pictures inside the PDF. Text and vector graphics stay as they are. Blurriness can only appear if pages must be flattened to hit a very small target, and that is where the floor is: a text document goes very small indeed, but below roughly 150 KB a multi-page scan usually has to be flattened into images, which costs the selectable text.

Why is my PDF so big in the first place?

Usually because it contains full-resolution photos or scans. A phone scan at 12 megapixels is far more detail than a printed page needs. Downscaling those images to around 150–200 dpi saves 80–95% with no visible difference.

How do I make a PDF small enough to email or send on WhatsApp?

Pick Gmail (25 MB) or type a smaller target. Most PDFs with photos shrink by 70–90% with no visible difference. WhatsApp accepts large documents, but a smaller file sends faster on mobile data.

Is it safe to compress my CV or bank statement here?

Yes. The PDF is processed inside your browser and never uploaded. You can switch off Wi-Fi after the page loads and it still works.

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