Compress a PDF file
Large PDFs bounce off email attachment limits and slow down uploads. Compress yours down to a fraction of the size, with a choice of how much quality to trade off.
How it works
- 1Upload the PDF you want to shrink.
- 2Pick a compression level: smallest file size, balanced, or high quality.
- 3Click "Process & download" to get the compressed file.
Good to know
- Most of a PDF's size comes from images, not text, so compression helps most on scan-heavy or photo-heavy files and barely changes a text-only document.
- "Screen" produces the smallest file at the lowest image quality, "ebook" is the balanced middle, and "printer" keeps quality high with more modest savings.
Frequently asked questions
It depends heavily on content - PDFs full of high-resolution images shrink the most, while text-only PDFs are already small and may not shrink much further.
The "smallest file size" setting trades more visual quality for size; "high quality" keeps images closer to the original at a smaller size reduction.
Yes - compression only affects embedded images and internal file structure, never the actual text content.