Make a PDF smaller with two methods, and see the real before and after size of the file. Fast, free, and built for simple browser-based workflows.
No file selected yet. Compression happens in your browser — your file is never uploaded.
Choose a PDF, pick a method, then click Compress PDF.
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PDF Compress is a free online tool that makes a PDF smaller and gives you back a single, smaller PDF. Choose between a clean re-save that keeps every word selectable and a redraw that trades that selectability for a far lighter file, then read the real before and after sizes on screen.
It earns its keep when a file sits a few megabytes over somebody else's limit: a scanned tenancy agreement that will not go through a council upload form capped at 5 MB, a photo-heavy brochure bouncing back off a mail server, a portfolio going to a job board, or a folder of receipts too heavy for a phone to send on a weak signal. How much comes off depends entirely on what is inside. A document that is mostly typed text is already compact and will barely move, while one built from page scans is where the saving turns dramatic.
Your document is read off your own disk and rebuilt by the browser you are sitting in front of, so the tax return or the client proposal you are trying to slim down is never posted to this site. It is worth knowing what the redraw method really does: every page is painted afresh at the resolution you pick and kept inside the new document as one compressed photograph, which is why the words in it stop behaving like words. If what you actually want is picture files of the pages rather than a lighter document, that is the PDF to Image tool's job, and PDF Merge is the one to reach for when several slimmed-down files should arrive as a single attachment. Depending on the method you choose, either pdf-lib or the pdf.js and jsPDF pair is fetched from a public CDN when you click Compress PDF, so this page needs a connection.
Click Choose PDF File and pick the document you want to shrink. The line underneath confirms its name and its current size in KB, which is the number the result will be measured against.
Compression Method offers two. Re-save and clean up repacks the file and keeps the text selectable, with modest savings. Rasterise pages redraws every page as a compressed picture, which shrinks image-heavy scans a lot but makes the text non-selectable.
Choosing Rasterise reveals two sliders. Image Quality starts at 0.6 and controls how hard each page picture is compressed. Resolution starts at 1.5x and controls how many pixels each page is drawn with. Lower both if the first result is still too heavy.
Click Compress PDF. The result line gives the page count and the real before and after sizes, or tells you the file did not shrink. Click Download Compressed PDF to save it with -compressed added to the name, or Clear to start again.
Yes! All our tools are 100% free to use with no hidden costs, no registration required, and no credit card needed.
Absolutely. All tools run entirely in your browser (client-side). Your data never leaves your device and is not sent to our servers.
Yes! All our tools are free for both personal and commercial use.
Start with Re-save and clean up, because it keeps the text selectable and costs you nothing in quality. If the saving is disappointing and the document is made of scanned or photographed pages, switch to Rasterise, which is where the large reductions actually come from.
Because there was nothing spare in it. A document exported straight from a word processor is mostly typed text, which is already extremely compact, and a file that has been optimised once has no unused objects left to drop. The result line tells you this outright rather than pretending it worked.
Yes, and the tool will tell you when it has. Redrawing a page of crisp typed text as a picture can easily take more room than the text did, especially at a high Resolution setting. When that happens, drop the Image Quality and the Resolution and run it again.
With the re-save method, yes: the pages are carried over intact, so you can still select, copy and search every word. The rasterise method paints each page as a single flat picture, so afterwards the words are pixels and Ctrl+F finds nothing in them.
They only appear for the rasterise method. Image Quality, from 0.1 to 1, sets how hard each page picture is squeezed, which shows up as softness and blotchiness. Resolution, from 0.5x to 3x, sets how many pixels the page is drawn with before it is squeezed.
That is the case it helps most. A scan is a stack of photographs saved at whatever the scanner felt like, so redrawing each page at 1.5x and a quality of 0.6 routinely takes most of the weight off while the pages stay perfectly readable on screen and in print.
No. Each page in the finished file is created at the same width, height and orientation as the page it replaces, measured in points, so an A4 report stays A4 and a landscape drawing stays landscape. Nothing is cropped, rotated, reflowed or scaled onto a different paper size.
No, and that is deliberate, because those entries can be surprisingly bulky in files exported from design software. Both methods hand back a document with the title, author, subject, keywords, creator and producer emptied. Note them down first with the PDF Metadata Viewer tool if you need them.