Compress PDF

Reduce a PDF's file size for email or upload limits, without losing readability.

This works by re-rendering each page as a compressed image and rebuilding the PDF from those images — it shrinks image-heavy and scanned PDFs dramatically, but the resulting pages are no longer text-selectable. If you need to keep selectable text, this isn't the right tool for that PDF.

1 · UPLOAD PDF

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Drop a PDF here, or click to browse
Processed entirely in your browser

What this tool does

Compressing a PDF reduces its file size, usually so it fits under an email attachment limit or a form's upload cap, while keeping the pages readable at normal viewing sizes.

How it works

  1. Upload the PDF you want to shrink.
  2. Set an image quality level and compress.
  3. Download the smaller PDF once you're happy with the size/quality trade-off.
Example: Upload a 12MB scanned PDF at 60% quality and it typically comes down to 2–4MB — well under most email providers' 25MB limit — with pages still perfectly readable on screen.
Yes. The compress pdf is completely free, with no signup, no watermark, and no limit on how many times you use it.
No installation is needed — it runs entirely in your browser, on desktop or mobile, and works the same way on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android.
It handles PDF upload -> compressed PDF. If your file is in a different format, use the PDF converter tools linked from this page first.
Your file is used only to generate your result for this one task. It is not stored long-term, shared, or used for anything else.
Yes — "compress pdf" and "reduce pdf file size" describe the same task. This page is built to handle that search directly, without redirecting you elsewhere.