PDF tool
Compress a PDF
Most oversized PDFs are heavy because of the pictures inside them, not the words. The default method re-encodes only those images and leaves the text layer completely alone — so the file gets smaller and stays searchable, selectable and readable by screen readers.
- 100% free
- No signup
- Never uploaded
Drop your file here
or click to browse from your device
Supports PDF · Max 100 MB · Up to 2,000 pages
Settings
The default only touches pictures inside the file. Flattening turns every page into a photo of itself: much smaller, but you can no longer search, select or copy the text.
- Secure & privateYour files are never shared
- Lightning fastMost images in under a second
- High qualitymozjpeg and libvips under the hood
- Works everywhereAny device, any browser
Output quality
The default method finds the JPEG images embedded in the document, decodes them, scales anything above the limit for your chosen level, and re-encodes them — 2200 pixels at quality 86 for Light, 1600 at 76 for Balanced, 1100 at 62 for Strong. Each image is only replaced if the new version is genuinely smaller, so images that were already well compressed are left untouched. Everything that is not a JPEG image is copied across verbatim: text, fonts, vector graphics, links and annotations all survive intact. Images stored in other internal formats are deliberately skipped rather than rebuilt, because rebuilding them wrongly produces a file that opens but displays incorrectly, and a quietly broken document is worse than one that did not shrink.
See what this tool actually did to real files — median size change, speed and sample size, published whichever way the numbers fall.
Privacy: this tool does not upload your file
The file is never sent anywhere
This tool is JavaScript running in your tab. Your document is read from your disk into browser memory and never transmitted — not to us, not to anyone. It handles files up to 100 MB and 2,000 pages.
You can check this yourself
Load this page, turn off your internet connection, and run the tool. It still works. That is not a promise about our conduct — it is something you can verify in ten seconds.
Nothing to delete afterwards
There is no upload, no job record and no copy on any server, so there is no retention period. Close the tab and the working copy is gone with it.
No third parties involved
The PDF engine and its fonts are served from this domain rather than a public CDN, so no outside company sees that you used this page, or when.
Input, output and limits
Every figure below is read from the same configuration the server enforces, so this page cannot promise a limit the system will refuse.
- Input formats
- application/pdf
- Output format
- application/pdf
- Maximum file size
- 100 MB per file
- Maximum pages
- 2,000 per run
- Multiple files
- One file at a time
- Price
- Free, with no account and no watermark
- Processing
- Inside your browser — the file is never uploaded
- Engine
- pdf-lib, running inside your browser
- File retention
- None — nothing is uploaded, so there is nothing to keep or delete
Common use cases
The attachment is too large to email
A 25 MB report of photographs and charts usually lands under 5 MB with the default method, and every word in it stays searchable.
An upload form with a hard size cap
Government and university portals often cap uploads at 2 or 5 MB. Try Balanced first and move to Strong only if you have to.
A scan that is far bigger than it should be
Scanners save at print resolution by default. For a document you only need to read on screen, that is several times more detail than anyone will ever see.
Settings you can change
Method
Shrink images, keep text selectable — recommended · Tidy up only — nothing is re-encoded · Flatten pages to images — smallest, text stops being text
The default only touches pictures inside the file. Flattening turns every page into a photo of itself: much smaller, but you can no longer search, select or copy the text.
How hard to squeeze
Light — keep images print-sharp · Balanced — recommended · Strong — smallest file, softer images
Troubleshooting
- The file barely got smaller
- There was probably little image data to remove — a text-only document is already close to as small as it goes. Check whether the tool reported keeping your original; if so, nothing further will help.
- I got my original file back unchanged
- Every method produced something larger than the input, so the original was returned rather than a worse file. This is common with documents that have already been compressed once.
- The images look soft now
- Switch from Strong to Balanced or Light and run it on the original again — not on the already-compressed output, which would compound the loss.
- I can no longer search the text
- That is the flatten method, which converts pages into images. Run the original through the default method instead.
Something else went wrong? Tell us what happened — a person reads every report, and that is how this list gets longer.
Frequently asked questions
Browse pdf toolsWill the text still be selectable afterwards?
With the default method, yes — that is the whole point of it. Only embedded images are touched; the text layer, fonts and vector drawings are left exactly as they were. The flatten method is the exception, and it says so plainly: it turns each page into a picture of itself, which makes the file much smaller and stops the text being text.
How much smaller will my file get?
It depends entirely on what is inside. A scanned document or a report full of photographs often drops by 60–80%. A file that is nothing but text may barely move, because there is very little there to remove — and this tool will tell you that rather than pretending otherwise.
What happens if it cannot make the file smaller?
You get your original file back, unchanged, with a note saying so. A compression tool that hands back something larger than what you gave it looks broken even when the reason is sound, so that never happens here.
When should I use the flatten method?
When the document is already a scan. Every page of a scanned file is a photograph, so there is no text layer to lose and flattening simply produces a smaller file. For anything typed, avoid it — you would be discarding the searchable text for a few hundred kilobytes.
Why does compressing a scanned document barely help?
Scanners often store pages using a format this tool deliberately does not rebuild, because rebuilding it incorrectly produces a corrupt file. Try the flatten method on those — for a scan it costs nothing, since the pages were images to begin with.
Where does my file go when I use this tool?
Nowhere. This tool is JavaScript that runs inside your browser tab, so the file is read straight from your disk into memory on your own device and never sent to us. There is no upload, no job record and no copy to delete afterwards — close the tab and the working copy goes with it. You can confirm this yourself: load the page, disconnect from the internet, and the tool still works. It handles files up to 100 MB and 2,000 pages, and those limits come from what one browser tab can hold rather than from anything on our side.