PDF Compressor
Shrink a PDF's file size so it slips under an email or upload limit, while keeping the text sharp.
It's almost always the images
A PDF full of text is tiny; what makes one heavy is pictures — scanned pages, screenshots, photos dropped in at full resolution. So compressing a PDF really means recompressing those images to a sensible size. The text and layout are left alone, which is why the words stay crisp even as the file gets lighter.
Pick a compression level, and for anything you are simply emailing to read on screen, a middle setting usually halves the size with no difference you will notice.
When it barely helps
A text-only PDF, or one someone already optimised, has little left to squeeze, so do not be surprised if it hardly moves. A scanned document is the opposite — it is essentially a stack of images and often drops dramatically. If you have a whole folder of PDFs to shrink, doing them as a batch saves repeating the job one by one.
How to compress a PDF
- Add the PDF you need to shrink.
- Pick a compression level — more compression means a smaller file but softer images.
- Download the smaller PDF and check it still looks right.
Why PDFs get so big
Most oversized PDFs are heavy because of high-resolution images and scanned pages, not the text. Compression works mainly by re-encoding those images at a sensible resolution for screen or email, which is why a 20 MB scan can often drop to a couple of megabytes with no visible difference.
If a file is mostly text and still large, the culprit is often embedded fonts or leftover data from the program that made it; re-saving through compression cleans much of that up too.
Frequently asked questions
How small can it get?
It depends on the content. Image-heavy or scanned PDFs shrink dramatically; text-only files are already small and change little.
Will compression blur my text?
No. Text stays crisp — only images are re-encoded, and you control how aggressively.
What is a good target size for email?
Most email limits are 20-25 MB, but under 10 MB is a safer, faster attachment.
Will the text go blurry?
No. Text stays as sharp vector text; only the embedded images are recompressed.
How much smaller will it get?
An image-heavy or scanned PDF can drop by well over half. A text-only file may barely change, because there is little to compress.
Is my file uploaded?
No. The compression happens in your browser.