Compress PDF

Most people who need to shrink a PDF want the same three things: a smaller file, no sign-up wall, and no watermark stamped across their pages. Here you can compress PDF online free with all three. There is no account to create, no email to confirm, no daily quota that runs out after two files, and nothing is added to your document. You add a PDF, choose a level, and download the result.

Free does not mean cut down. Every file goes through the same engine, whether it is a one-page receipt or a hundred-page report, and batch compression is not held back for a paid plan. You can compress PDF files ten at a time and download them together as one ZIP, at no cost.

The only real limit is size. Each PDF can be up to 100 MB, because larger uploads are refused by the network that sits in front of our server before they ever reach it. For anything bigger, split the file first and compress each part.

Because the work happens on our server rather than in your browser, your PDF does travel over the internet, over an encrypted connection, and the working copy is deleted before your download starts. We think that trade is worth making. A browser on its own cannot re-encode the pictures inside a PDF properly without flattening the text into images, and that is exactly the mistake that makes so many free compressors produce blurry, unsearchable files.

Switch to Target size, pick a limit or type your own, and add your PDFs. Instead of guessing, the tool compresses each file at several different settings, measures every result, and keeps the one with the most picture detail that still fits under your limit. You never get a file that is needlessly small, and you never have to try level after level yourself.

On our test files the difference was clear. A 987 KB PDF holding one large photo came back at 226 KB for a 300 KB limit, 161 KB for 200 KB, and 71 KB for 100 KB, with its text intact every time. A 17 MB twelve-page report with photos came in at 857 KB for 1 MB and 192 KB for 200 KB.

Sometimes a limit is simply too small. A scanned page kept in colour could not get under 150 KB while its small print stayed readable; the smallest readable version was 208 KB. Rather than quietly handing back a blurry file, the tool tells you exactly that, and suggests the fix: with Black & white scans turned on, the same page came down to 112 KB and read more clearly than the original. If you really need to go smaller still, you can choose to go below the readable floor, with a clear warning that small print may blur.

This is also the quickest way to compress PDF document online for an exam, job or government portal, where the upload box states its limit and rejects anything even slightly over it.

For the most common limits there are dedicated guides with measured results and a checklist: Compress PDF to 100 KB, Compress PDF to 200 KB, Compress PDF to 500 KB and Compress PDF to 1 MB.

Extreme is for hard size limits. It resizes pictures to 100 dpi and re-encodes them more tightly, while the text stays exactly as it was. It stops at 100 dpi rather than the common 72 on purpose: at 72 dpi, small print in scans starts to misread.

It is worth being precise here, because most compressors are not. Whenever you compress PDF files, you make them smaller by throwing information away, and the only real question is which information. The aim is to lose only what you would never notice.

Text loses nothing. Characters, fonts and layout are carried across unchanged at every level, so words stay perfectly sharp at any zoom. That is the part of a document people actually read, and it is precisely the part many tools damage when they turn each page into a single picture.

Pictures are where the saving comes from, and where your choice matters. At Less, pictures keep 220 dpi, more detail than most screens can show and enough for a clean print; in side-by-side comparisons at 200 percent zoom the difference from the original was hard to spot. Recommended, at 150 dpi, is sharp on any screen. Extreme, at 100 dpi, is visibly softer when you zoom into a photo, though still perfectly readable.

So if you want to compress PDF without losing quality at all, choose Lossless: every picture is kept byte for byte and only the structure of the file is rewritten. It saves the most on documents exported from Word and on forms, and little on a PDF made of photos, because those photos are already compressed. If a slightly softer photo is acceptable, Less gives a much bigger saving with a difference that is hard to see.

Whichever level you use to compress PDF files, press Compare before downloading. Both versions open side by side, scroll together, and zoom to 400 percent, so you can judge the photos and small print yourself.

Some things are never touched at all: links, bookmarks, the order and orientation of pages, and fillable form fields. Files with forms take a lossless route, so every field still works afterwards.

A PDF keeps text and pictures separately. Text is stored as characters in a font, which takes very little space and stays crisp at any zoom. Pictures, especially photos from a phone camera, are usually what make a PDF heavy.

A quick way to compress PDF files is to turn every page into one big picture and save it at low quality. It works on paper, but the words become part of an image: you can no longer select or search them, they blur when you zoom, and links and bookmarks disappear.

When you compress PDF files here, the opposite happens. Only the pictures inside your PDF are resized and re-encoded, to the resolution of the level you choose. The text, fonts, links and bookmarks are rewritten as they were. That is why a report can lose most of its weight and still read exactly the same.

The one exception is a scanned document, where each page already is a picture. Scans shrink the most, so the smallest level was chosen with care, as the section on Extreme explains.

Putting a PDF inside a ZIP archive rarely helps much. The pictures in a PDF are usually already compressed, and so is most of the rest of the file, so a ZIP typically saves only a few percent. Worse, whoever receives it has to unpack the archive before reading anything, and many upload portals refuse ZIP files outright.

When you compress PDF files properly, the result is different in kind. Instead of wrapping the file, the tool rebuilds it with smaller pictures and a tighter structure, and what you get back is still an ordinary PDF that opens anywhere. Use a ZIP only to bundle several compressed PDFs together, which is exactly what the Download all button does.