Compress PDF
100% privateShrink a PDF until it fits under the exact limit an upload form asks for. Read on this device, never uploaded.
Pick the limit the form is asking for. We find the best quality that fits under it — you never have to guess a percentage.
Keep JPG for anything you’re uploading to a form — some portals still reject WebP. PDFs always come back as PDFs.
Advanced options
The picture is fitted inside this box and keeps its shape — nothing is ever cropped without you asking.
Refuse to go below this quality, even if that means missing the target. Raise it if you’d rather have a slightly bigger file than a blotchy one.
Checking usage…
Step by step
How to compress a PDF
Four steps. The size you name is the size you get, or the tool tells you why not.
Add your PDF
Drag it onto this page, or press Choose files. If it contains selectable text you are warned straight away what compressing will do to it.
Name the limit
Under 1 MB is already selected. Change it to whatever the form says: 200 KB, 500 KB, 2 MB, or Custom size for any other number.
Press Compress
Each page is rebuilt as an image sized to its share of the target, and a nearly blank page hands its unused share to the next. The progress counts the pages off inside the button.
Download
The green button saves the smaller PDF. The page count and page sizes are kept: an A4 page stays A4.
Read this first
What compressing a PDF here does, and doesn’t do
Shrinking a PDF in a browser, without sending it anywhere, means redrawing every page as a picture. That is the right trade for some PDFs and the wrong one for others, so here is which is which.
Best for scans
Scanned certificates, ID cards, signed forms and phone photos saved as PDF are already pictures, so nothing is lost but the excess size. That is exactly what most upload forms are asking you for.
Careful with text PDFs
If your PDF has real text, it becomes part of the page image: still readable, but no longer selectable or searchable. The tool checks when you add the file and warns you before anything happens. For a report you need to search, use your PDF app’s own reduce-size export.
Smaller still
Under Advanced options, Convert to black and white makes scans roughly a third smaller, which often decides whether a multi-page scan fits. Raise the Quality floor if you’d rather miss the target than get blotchy pages.
Private by design
Why this compressor can’t leak your file
Think about what people actually compress: a photo of themselves for an exam form, a scan of a passport or PAN card, a signature, a salary slip. Most free compressors upload all of that to a server, shrink it there, and hand back a link — one popular tool states plainly that your images sit on its server for thirty minutes afterwards. This one works differently, and you can check that yourself.
Zero uploads
The compressor is downloaded to your browser once. From then on it reads your file straight from your own disk. Your photo never enters a network request, so there is no copy of it anywhere for us to keep, lose, or be compelled to hand over.
Nothing stored
The original and the compressed copy live only in this tab’s memory. Close it and both are gone immediately — no processing queue, no temporary folder, no “we delete files after thirty minutes” promise you have to take on trust.
No account
No sign-up, no email address, no daily limit, no watermark stamped across your photo, and no paid tier that unlocks the size you actually needed.
To be precise about what does leave your device — because “100% private” is easy to say and worth checking. Two things, neither of them your file:
1. When a compression finishes, this page sends one anonymous message to our counter saying “reduce-file-size was used”. No file, no file name, no sizes, nothing identifying you. It exists so the usage number above is a real one rather than something we invented.
2. Google Analytics records the page view and that a compression happened, the same as on every other page of this site. It is told which size limit and format you picked from the lists, and whether the result fitted — never anything about your file: not its name, its size, how much smaller it got or how many you compressed. You can block it and the tool works exactly the same.
Your photos and documents are in neither. They never enter a network request at all — and unlike a promise, that is something you can check. Turn off your wifi, reload this page and compress something anyway. It still works. No upload-based compressor can pass that test.
At a glance
Tool specifications
| Input | JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP and AVIF images; PDF documents |
|---|---|
| Output | JPG or WebP for images; PDF for PDFs. Several images arrive as one ZIP |
| Target sizes | 20 KB to 5 MB from the list, or any custom value up to 50 MB |
| What “KB” means here | 1 KB = 1024 bytes, matching Windows, macOS and virtually every upload form |
| How the target is met | Highest quality that fits, found by binary search; resolution is reduced only when compression alone cannot get there |
| Batch | Up to 60 images at once, each fitted to the target individually. One PDF at a time |
| PDF caveat | Pages are rebuilt as pictures, so text stops being selectable or searchable. You are warned before it happens |
| HEIC (iPhone photos) | Works in Safari on iPhone and Mac. In Chrome, Firefox or Edge, turn it into a JPG first with our Image Format Changer, which carries its own HEIC decoder |
| PNG output | Not offered — PNG has no quality setting, so a byte target can’t be met without throwing away pixels |
| Maximum file size | 150 MB hard limit; a warning above 25 MB |
| Where processing happens | In your browser, on your device — nothing is uploaded |
| Works offline | Yes, once the page has loaded, including as an installed app |
| Sign-up | Not required, not offered |
| Watermark | None |
| Price | Free |
Questions
Compressing PDFs, answered
Is my PDF uploaded anywhere?
How small can a PDF get?
Why is the text in my compressed PDF no longer selectable?
Will the pages keep their size and order?
Can I compress several PDFs at once?
Does 1 MB mean 1,000,000 bytes here?
My PDF is password-protected. What do I do?
Is there a catch: a sign-up, a watermark, a daily limit?
Keep it handy
Save it, share it, or tell us what’s missing
Come back to it
Bookmark the page, or pin it to your saved tools so it sits at the top of the tools list on this device.
Something not right?
If a file wouldn’t open, a form still rejected the result, or the preset you needed isn’t in the list, tell us. The form opens with the tool already filled in, so you only have to describe what happened.
More free tools
Other things you can do here
Every one of these runs the same way — on your device, with nothing uploaded.
This page is the Reduce Any File Size, set up for one job. Others like it: HEIC to JPG · WebP to JPG · JPG to PDF · PDF to JPG · Compress Image to 20 KB · Compress Image to 50 KB · Compress Image to 100 KB.