Compress PDF
Reduce the file size of a PDF so it's easier to email, upload or store. Pick a compression level and see exactly how much space you saved before downloading.
Your files are processed locally in your browser and are not uploaded to our servers.
How to use compress pdf
- 1Upload the PDF you want to shrink.
- 2Choose a compression level: Low, Medium or High.
- 3Click Compress and wait for it to process in your browser.
- 4Compare the original and new file size, then download the result.
About this tool
PDF compression works differently depending on what's inside the file. Low compression losslessly re-packages the document's internal structure, keeping text selectable and images untouched — savings are usually modest, especially for text-only PDFs that are already efficient.
Medium and High compression re-render each page as an optimized image at a reduced resolution and quality, similar to how a scanner or printer would flatten a page. This can shrink image-heavy or scanned PDFs dramatically, but the trade-off is that text is no longer selectable or searchable in the output file.
Because effectiveness depends entirely on the PDF's contents, some files — particularly ones that are already small or made almost entirely of vector text — may not shrink much at all. When that happens, this tool tells you honestly rather than presenting a misleading result.
Frequently asked questions
At the Low level, no — the document structure is optimized but pages stay as real text and vector graphics. At Medium and High, each page is re-rendered as an image to achieve greater size reduction, so text can no longer be selected, searched or copied in the output.