Make a PDF smaller without losing quality
Quick answer
Upload your PDF to the compressor, choose a compression level, and download the smaller file. Balanced suits most documents; Strong gives the smallest result for scans and photo-heavy files.
- 1Upload your PDF.
- 2Pick a compression level.
- 3Click Compress.
- 4Download the smaller file.
Free, no sign-up, and your file is read on your own device rather than uploaded.
A PDF is usually too large for one reason: the images inside it - a scan, a photo, a screenshot - are stored at far higher quality than the document actually needs. Compression finds every image in the file and re-encodes it at a lower quality, while leaving the text completely alone. That is why a compressed PDF still reads perfectly and its text is still selectable and searchable - only the pictures changed.
This single tool handles every common reason people need a smaller PDF: an email attachment limit, WhatsApp's compression and size caps, a government or job-application portal with a strict upload limit, or simply wanting a document that takes less space and opens faster.
Step by step
Pick how hard to compress
Light keeps the best quality, for documents that are mostly text. Balanced suits most files. Strong gives the smallest file, with visible softening on photographs.
Compress PDFCheck the result and download
You're shown the before and after sizes and how many images changed - and if the file could not be made smaller, you get the original back untouched rather than a pointless copy.
Compress PDF
Tips
- For a strict email attachment limit (commonly 10-25 MB), start with Balanced. If the result is still too big, run Strong on it next - most scanned documents clear a 10 MB limit easily at that level.
- For WhatsApp, which compresses documents itself on send, Balanced compression beforehand keeps you in control of the quality rather than leaving it entirely to WhatsApp's own compression.
- A text-only document - an invoice, a letter, a typed report - is usually already small and will barely change size. That is expected, not a fault: there is very little to compress in a file with no meaningful images.
- If you need the file even smaller after Strong, check whether some pages could be dropped instead (Delete PDF Pages) or whether a lower page count via Split PDF meets the requirement, since compression alone has a practical floor.
Common problems
The compressed file is barely smaller than the original.
The PDF is probably already mostly text with little image content, so there is little for compression to remove. This is the correct, honest outcome - the tool will not inflate the file to appear to have done something.
You need to hit an exact size limit, like 10 MB.
Try Balanced first, then Strong if the result is still over the limit. Photo-heavy or scanned documents typically shrink the most, often by half or more even at Balanced.
The compressed PDF looks slightly softer on photographs.
That is the trade-off at Strong compression, and it only affects images - text stays perfectly sharp throughout. Use Light or Balanced if photo quality matters more than file size.
Your recipient still says the file is too large after compressing.
Check whether the whole document needs to go, or only certain pages - Extract PDF Pages or Split PDF can reduce the page count itself, which compression alone cannot do.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I reduce a PDF file size?
- Upload it to the PDF Compressor, choose a compression level, and download the result. The tool re-encodes embedded images at a lower quality and leaves the text untouched, which is almost always what makes the file smaller.
- How do I compress a PDF for email?
- Use Balanced compression first, which suits most attachment limits (commonly 10-25 MB). If the result is still too large, run Strong compression on it - scanned or photo-heavy documents usually clear common email limits comfortably at that level.
- How do I reduce a PDF size for WhatsApp?
- Compress it with Balanced or Strong before sending. WhatsApp applies its own compression to documents on send, so starting from a smaller, cleanly compressed file gives you more control over the final quality than leaving it entirely to WhatsApp.
- Can I make a PDF smaller without losing quality?
- Light compression keeps quality closest to the original while still reducing file size, mainly by re-encoding images more efficiently rather than more aggressively. For the smallest possible file with no visible loss, this is the level to start with.
- Does compressing a PDF affect the text?
- No. Only embedded images are re-encoded. Text stays exactly as sharp, selectable and searchable as it was before compression.
- Why did my scanned PDF get much smaller, but my typed document barely changed?
- A scan is made entirely of images, so there is a lot for compression to work with. A typed document is mostly real text, which takes up very little space regardless of compression - so there is little left to shrink.
- Is my PDF uploaded to a server to be compressed?
- No. Compression happens entirely in your browser, on your own device. The file is never transmitted anywhere and nothing is stored.
Doing several things to this PDF?
"Editing a PDF" is usually one of five different jobs. Open the file once and you can do all of them in sequence - reorder the pages, mark it, number it, sign it and shrink it - then download once at the end.
How to edit a PDF without AcrobatRelated PDF tools
- PDF InspectorPage sizes, rotation, text, images and whether the document is a scan.
- Merge PDFCombine several PDFs into one file, in the order you choose.
- Split PDFExtract a page range from a PDF, or split it into individual pages.
Related articles
- PDF Basics
Why is my PDF so large?
Almost always, it's the images. Real text and vector graphics take up almost no space; a page that is actually a high-resolution photo or scan can be several megabytes on its own. Upload your PDF to the compressor, choose a compression level, and download the smaller file.
- Organize
How to combine multiple PDFs into one file
Upload your PDF files, drag them into the order you want, click Merge PDF, and download the combined file.
- Inspect & Extract
Is your PDF a scan, or does it have real text?
Open the PDF Inspector - it shows the page count, each page's size, whether the document has real selectable text or is a scan, and other useful details, without changing the file at all.
- Compress
Why won't my PDF compress below 100KB?
A PDF's size floor is set by what is actually inside it. A page that is a full scanned photograph has real detail that has to be thrown away to shrink further, and there is a point past which doing that makes the page illegible - a good compressor stops there rather than forcing an arbitrary number. A PDF made of real text and vector graphics, by contrast, is already close to its floor and was never going to shrink much regardless of the target.