Skip to content
GivenTool

Compress a PDF to a smaller file size

Shrink scanned PDFs to a target size (such as 200 KB) or by level, on your device. The result is image-based.

Loading tool…

Upload forms for jobs, visas, universities and government services usually cap each document, often at a few hundred kilobytes or a megabyte, while a phone scan of a few pages easily reaches 5 to 20 MB. Type the limit you were given, or pick a level, and the tool rebuilds the PDF so it fits.

How it works, honestly: each page is rendered to an image and the PDF is rebuilt from those images. That is what allows large reductions without uploading anything, but the text in the result can no longer be selected, searched or copied, and links and form fields are removed. It is the right choice for scanned documents and for uploads to portals with a size limit; keep the original for everything else.

In target mode the byte budget is shared across the pages by area. Each page is rendered at up to 150 dpi and its JPEG quality is found by bisection, the same search the image compressor uses; if even low quality is too big, the page resolution is lowered step by step, and bytes a simple page does not need go to the pages after it. The result reports the lowest resolution used so you can judge readability. Black-and-white mode often halves the size of scans.

How to use it

  1. Choose a PDF.
  2. Pick "Hit a target file size" and type the limit in KB, or pick a compression level.
  3. Turn on black and white for text scans if colour does not matter.
  4. Click Compress PDF, check the reported size and resolution, and download.

Frequently asked questions

Are my files uploaded?

No. The file is read and processed by your browser on your device; nothing is sent to a server. You can load the page, switch off Wi-Fi and it still works.

Why is the text no longer selectable?

Browsers cannot re-encode the fonts and vector graphics inside a PDF, so the only way to shrink any PDF on your device is to turn each page into a compressed image. The pages look the same, but they are pictures. For a scan this changes nothing, because it was already pictures.

What if the result is larger than my file?

Text-only PDFs made by Word or a web browser are often already tiny, and turning them into images can make them bigger. The tool tells you when that happens; keep the original.

How small can a PDF get?

It depends on how many pages share the budget and how much detail they hold. The tool never shrinks pages below a floor of about 40 dpi and reports the lowest resolution it used; below about 100 dpi small print starts to blur. If a long document will not fit, split it or remove pages you do not need.

Which level should I choose?

Light (150 dpi) keeps small print crisp, Balanced (110 dpi) suits most forms, Strong (72 dpi) is for large-print documents that must be tiny. Target mode picks the best quality that fits for you.

Related tools