Compress PDF online

Compress PDF files online by re-rendering pages as JPEG images at the DPI and quality you set. Best for scans. Runs in your browser, not uploaded.

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Pages become images

This compressor rasterizes every page. Each page is drawn as a picture at the resolution you pick, saved as a JPEG, and placed into a new PDF. After compression you can no longer select, copy or search the text, links stop working, and form fields are gone. That is the price of the size drop. Use it for scans and photo-heavy PDFs, and keep your original for anything you need to search or edit.

How to compress a PDF

Drop the PDF above and pick a resolution between 72 and 200 DPI and an image quality between 30 and 95 percent. The defaults are 120 DPI and 70 percent. Press Compress PDF and a progress bar shows each page as it renders. Download the file ending in -compressed.pdf and check its size against your limit.

Settings for email and upload limits

120 DPI at 70 percent reads well on screen and suits email. For the smallest file, drop to 72 to 96 DPI and around 50 percent, which is still legible for most typed documents. Go up to 150 to 200 DPI if the PDF will be printed or contains small print. A scanned 20-page document often goes from tens of megabytes to a few megabytes at the defaults.

When this method won't help

PDFs exported from Word, Google Docs or a browser are mostly text and vector graphics, which are already compact. Turning them into images can make the file bigger and always makes it worse to use. For those, removing pages you don't need with Delete pages is usually the better way to save space.

Before you start

Input: PDF. Output: Compressed PDF. The settings appear before anything runs, so you can check them first. Your original file is never changed.

If layout, notes, forms, signatures or fonts matter, check the new PDF page by page. A file that opens is not the same as a file that looks right.

Keep the original until you have opened and checked the result. The work happens in this browser tab, so the size you can handle depends on your device's memory, your browser and the file itself.