PDF Compressor
A PDF compressor is a free online tool that reduces the file size of PDF documents β making them easier to email, upload, and store without sacrificing quality.
Your PDF never leaves your device. All processing runs in your browser.
How to use PDF Compressor
- Upload PDF β Select the PDF file you want to compress.
- Choose compression level β Pick light, medium, or maximum compression.
- Compress β Click Compress to shrink the file in your browser.
- Download β Save the smaller PDF to your device.
Key features
- Reduce PDF size by up to 80%
- Three compression levels
- Preserves text quality
- 100% browser-based β no upload
- No watermark, no signup
Why Compress PDFs?
PDFs are the universal format for documents β contracts, invoices, reports, applications, tickets. But PDFs can also be large. A scanned document with 20 pages of images can easily exceed 20 MB, making it too big to email or upload to most government portals (which cap uploads at 2-5 MB). Compressing a PDF reduces its file size dramatically while keeping it readable. It's the difference between a document you can't send and one that fits everywhere.
How PDF Compression Works
A PDF contains two main types of content: text (which is already efficient) and images (which take up most of the file size). Compression works by re-encoding images at a lower quality setting β from uncompressed or lossless to visually-lossless or moderate quality. Text is preserved exactly. Our tool uses smart adaptive compression: it detects image-heavy pages and optimizes them more aggressively, while leaving text-dominant pages virtually untouched.
Common Use Cases
Submitting documents to government portals (most cap at 2 MB). Emailing contracts and invoices to clients. Uploading assignments to college portals. Sharing reports and presentations. Archiving old documents. Reducing cloud storage usage. Sending scanned documents via WhatsApp or email. Basically any time you need a PDF to be smaller than it is.
Why Use Our Compressor?
Most online PDF compressors upload your files to their servers, process them, then send them back β creating privacy risks and slower processing. Our tool uses WebAssembly and JavaScript to compress entirely in your browser. Your PDFs never leave your device. This means better privacy, instant results, and no file size limits imposed by upload bandwidth.
Pro tips
- For scanned documents, use maximum compression to fit upload limits
- For text-based PDFs, light compression is usually sufficient
- Always keep a copy of the original PDF for future reference
- Compress after merging β merged PDFs often exceed upload limits
Common use cases
- Meeting government upload limits (2 MB)
- Emailing large contracts and invoices
- Uploading assignments to college portals
- Reducing cloud storage usage
- Sending documents via WhatsApp
Frequently asked questions
Is my PDF uploaded to a server?+
No β everything runs in your browser. Your PDF never leaves your device.
How much can I compress?+
Depending on the content, 40-80% reduction is common. Image-heavy PDFs compress more than text-only ones.
Will text be preserved?+
Yes β text stays perfectly crisp. Only images may be slightly optimized.
What's the max file size?+
No hard limit. Very large files (100+ MB) may take a moment.
Is it free?+
Yes, 100% free with no watermark.
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