Compress PDF
Make a PDF smaller for email or upload forms — choose lossless cleanup or strong image-based compression.
✔ Done — what’s next?
You may also need
- Image Compressor — Reduce JPG, PNG and WebP file size in your browser with a live before/after size readout.
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How to use the Compress PDF
- Choose a PDF file.
- Pick "Lossless" (keeps text) or "Strong" (best for scans) and a quality.
- Compare the sizes and download the smaller PDF.
Common use cases
- Get a scanned PDF under an email or portal upload limit
- Shrink PDFs made from phone photos
- Clean up PDFs exported with lots of unused data
Example
A 14 MB, 10-page scanned PDF in "Strong" mode at 110 DPI, 70% quality usually drops to 1–2 MB.
What Compress PDF does
There are two ways to make a PDF smaller, and this tool offers both honestly. Lossless rewrites the file's internal structure with compressed object streams and drops unused data. Text stays selectable and searchable, but savings are usually 5–30%. Strong redraws every page as a compressed image at the resolution you choose, which can shrink scanned documents and photo-heavy PDFs by 70–95%. The trade-off is that text can no longer be selected or searched.
Use Strong for scans, phone-photo PDFs and email attachments. Use Lossless for contracts, forms and documents where people need to copy text. If a result would be bigger than your original, the tool tells you and you can simply keep the original.