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PDF · Compress · Free

Compress a PDF

Shrink a PDF's file size for email or an upload limit. Adjust quality and see the size drop.

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Click to choose a PDF, or drag it here
One file at a time

How to compress a PDF online

Upload your PDF, pick a quality level, and click "Compress PDF." This works by re-rendering every page as an optimized JPEG image and rebuilding the PDF from those images — the same technique used by most free online PDF compressors for image-heavy files. Because of this, any real text in the PDF becomes part of a picture and is no longer selectable, searchable, or copyable. This tool is best for scanned documents or PDFs that are already mostly images. If your PDF has text you need to keep selectable, compressing isn't the right tool — the text itself isn't usually what makes a PDF large.

Compressing a PDF online free of charge and without an account is the whole point of this tool — there's no daily limit, no watermark, and no waiting in an upload queue, which matters if your connection is slow or you're compressing several scanned files back to back. Because the compression runs in your own browser rather than on a server, there's also no round-trip upload/download time, which tends to matter more the larger the file and the slower the connection.

Will my PDF's text still be selectable after compressing?
No. This tool compresses by re-rendering every page as an optimized image, then rebuilding the PDF from those images. That means any real, selectable text becomes part of a picture and can no longer be selected, searched, or copied. It's best suited to scanned documents or image-heavy PDFs that are already effectively pictures.
How do I reduce PDF file size without losing quality?
There's always some trade-off with this kind of compression, but you control how much: keep the quality slider high (80-95%) for a smaller drop in visual quality with a more modest size reduction, or lower it toward 20-40% for the smallest possible file when quality matters less (e.g. an internal draft). If a PDF is already small or is mostly real text rather than scanned images, running it through this tool usually won't shrink it further and may even make it larger — in that case the file was likely already efficient.
Is my PDF uploaded anywhere?
No — compression happens locally in your browser using pdf.js and pdf-lib, which is what makes it safe: your file never leaves your device. See how it works.

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