Compress PDF
Reduce PDF file size while maintaining quality. Perfect for email attachments.
Large PDF files can be difficult to share via email, upload to portals, or store efficiently. This compressor shrinks a PDF by re-encoding the photos and scanned pages inside it as JPEG, at the quality and resolution you choose. Text, fonts and vector graphics are not touched, so they stay sharp and selectable.
Scans and photo-heavy documents shrink the most. Text-only PDFs are already compact, so they change very little — the tool shows the exact before and after size so you know what you are getting. Choose from three levels depending on whether you care more about quality or file size.
Drop your PDF file here to compress
or click to browse
How It Works
Upload PDF
Select the PDF file you want to compress by dragging it into the drop zone area.
Choose Compression Level
Select either 'Low Compression' (better quality) or 'High Compression' (smaller file size) depending on your needs. Click 'Compress PDF'.
Download
Instantly download your optimized, smaller PDF file. Text remains sharp while images are compressed to save space.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to Compress a PDF to Reduce File Size
Large PDFs are a pain to email, upload, or share. Our compression tool reduces file size by optimizing embedded images while keeping the text layer and layout perfectly intact. The result is a smaller file that looks nearly identical to the original.
- Upload your PDF file.
- Choose a compression level: Low (best quality), Medium (balanced), or High (smallest file).
- Click "Compress" to process the file.
- Check the before and after size, then download your compressed PDF.
PDF compression works by re-encoding the images inside the document as JPEG, at a lower quality and (on Medium and High) a lower resolution. Text, fonts and vector graphics are untouched. That makes it ideal for PDFs with scanned pages or embedded photographs, where the images account for most of the file size.
Where compression helps most - Getting a scanned document under a strict email attachment limit (often 20–25 MB). - Meeting an upload cap on a job portal, visa application, or university form. - Shrinking a slide deck exported as PDF so it sends quickly over mobile data. - Saving cloud-storage space and speeding up sync for large document libraries.
What to expect from each level Scans and photo-heavy files (brochures, image exports) shrink the most. Low keeps full resolution and re-encodes at high JPEG quality — a safe first try. Medium also reduces image resolution and usually cuts a scanned document by well over half. High goes furthest: in our own test, a 16 MB three-page scan came out at about 0.7 MB, with photos visibly softer but text still crisp. Text-only PDFs (reports, articles exported from Word) have almost no image data, so they barely change — the tool tells you when that is the case rather than handing back a bigger file. If your goal is a specific target such as 100 KB or 500 KB, start on High and step back to Medium if the images look too soft.
If a file is still too big on High, split the PDF into parts or remove pages you don't need, then compress each part.
Private by design Cloud compressors upload your document and may retain it for hours. Here the file is compressed inside your browser's memory and discarded the moment you close the tab — so even tax or medical PDFs are never exposed to the internet.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I reduce PDF file size for email?
Most email providers cap attachments at 20–25 MB. Upload your file, try Medium first, and check the new size shown on screen. If it is still too big, run it again on High. Scanned and photo-heavy PDFs usually drop well under the limit.
Can I compress a PDF to exactly 100KB?
You cannot type in an exact target, but you can see the result before downloading. Start on High; if the file is still over your limit, it is usually because of many pages of images — split the PDF or remove unneeded pages, then compress each part.
Will compression blur my text?
No. Our engine only targets embedded raster images (like photos or scans). True text and vector shapes remain perfectly crisp and pixel-perfect.
Is it safe to compress tax or medical PDFs online?
Yes, but ONLY if the tool is client-side like TinyPDFTools. Because your highly sensitive documents are never transmitted to our servers, there is zero risk of data interception.
Why did my PDF barely get smaller?
If a PDF is mostly text and vectors, there is little image data to compress — the file is already efficient. Some image types (CMYK print images, masked images) are also left untouched to avoid colour or transparency problems. Big savings come from documents with high-resolution photos or scans.