Compress a PDF
Choose how small you need it. You will see the new size before you download.
How it works
- Drop your PDF in.
- Pick how much to compress.
- Check the new size and download.
What it does
A PDF is usually large because of its pictures. Compressing one means deciding how much image quality you are prepared to lose to get under whatever limit is refusing your file — an email attachment cap, an upload form, a portal that will not take more than ten megabytes.
Choosing how hard to squeeze
There are several levels rather than one button, because the right answer depends on the document. A contract that is mostly text survives aggressive compression untouched. A portfolio of photographs does not. You see the resulting size before you download, so you can try a gentler setting if the first one went too far.
What actually shrinks
Images are re-encoded at a lower quality and, where it helps, a lower resolution. Text is left alone — it is already tiny and compressing it would gain nothing while risking how it renders. That is why a text-heavy document sometimes barely shrinks: there was not much to remove.
It takes a moment, and that is your machine working
Compression is the slowest of these tools because every image has to be decoded and re-encoded. That work happens on your own processor, in this tab, which is also why there is no queue — you are not waiting behind anybody else's document, and yours is not sitting on a server waiting its turn.
Doing this from your own code
Questions
How much smaller will my file get?
It depends entirely on what is in it. Image-heavy documents can shrink dramatically; a text-only file may hardly change. The size is shown before you download so you can judge rather than guess.
Will the text get blurry?
No. Text is not re-encoded — only images are.
Why is compressing slower than the other tools?
Every image is decoded and written again, and that happens on your computer rather than on a server.
Can I compress a file over 25 MB?
Not on the free tier, which is frustrating precisely when you need it most. An account raises the limit.
Is my file uploaded to be compressed?
No. It is read, re-encoded and written entirely in this browser tab.
Next
| Tool | What it does | Runs in | Same thing, programmatically |
|---|---|---|---|
| Convert PDF to JPG | Get every page as a JPG or a PNG. | your browser | GET /api/v1/documents/{id}.png |
| Merge PDF files | Join several PDFs into one, in the order you choose. | your browser | no endpoint |
| Split a PDF | Pull out the pages you want, or make one file per page. | your browser | GET /api/v1/documents/{id}.pdf |
| Edit a PDF | Change the words already in the PDF, in their original font. | your browser | the document model |