Compress a PDF

Pick a quality level, or a target size — 100 KB, 200 KB, 1 MB, anything. Compressed on your device; the honest before/after is always shown.

Open your network tab while it runs: zero requests. Your document stays yours.

How to compress a PDF

  1. Select or drop your PDF — it's read by your browser, never sent to a server.
  2. Choose a level — Less, Recommended, or Extreme — the trade is page sharpness versus file size.
  3. Compress → download — the result shows exactly how much was saved. If your PDF was already optimized and compressing would grow it, you get the original back and we say so.

Email attachment limits and upload caps are where most people meet PDF compression — usually on documents private enough that uploading them to a compressor is the wrong move. It runs on the same in-browser engine as our PDF merger, PDF splitter, and PDF to Markdown converter — the file never leaves your machine.

Need to hit an exact limit? Dedicated pages: Compress PDF to 100KB · Compress PDF to 1MB

Compressing PDFs, answered honestly.

Switch the tool to “Target size”, pick 100 KB or 200 KB (or type any number), and convert. Progressively stronger settings are tried until the file fits; if the target genuinely can't be reached, we tell you the closest honest result instead of pretending.
No. The compression runs entirely inside your browser and the result downloads on your device. Open the network tab while it runs: zero requests.
Pages are re-rendered as efficiently-encoded JPEG pages at your chosen quality. That shrinks scans and image-heavy documents dramatically. The honest trade-off: compressed pages become images, so their text is no longer selectable.
If compressing wouldn't make it at least a little smaller, we give you the original back unchanged and tell you — no fake savings, no silently bloated file.
Recommended balances sharpness and size for most documents. Extreme squeezes hardest for email limits. Less keeps pages crispest when the size cap is generous.
Free, no account, no watermark, no limits.
Still something on your mind? Try it yourself — it's free

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Coming soon · Premium

Take every tool offline — native apps for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS & Android.

  • Every tool on this site, running natively on your device
  • Fully offline — files never even touch a browser tab
  • Batch-process whole folders of documents locally

The native apps will be a one-time paid upgrade when they launch — everything in the browser stays free, always.