Free tool

PDF Compressor

Shrink PDF file sizes right in your browser. Batch upload and ZIP download supported.

This free PDF compressor makes PDF files smaller in your own browser. Choose Strong to redraw every page as an image, which is what shrinks a scan or a photo-heavy brochure, or Light to rewrite the file and strip hidden metadata while leaving the text selectable. Add as many files as you like and take them back one at a time or as a single ZIP.

Nothing is uploaded. Your files are read locally, compressed in your own tab and handed straight back, so there is nothing on a server to delete afterwards. If compressing ever makes a file larger, which happens with ordinary text documents, you get the original back instead and the tool says so.

1. Add your PDFs

Drop PDFs here or click to browse

Batch upload supported. Nothing leaves your browser.

2. Choose how hard to compress

Compression

Output quality

No PDFs added yet. Your compressed files will appear here.

How to compress a PDF

Five steps, nothing to install and no account.

Drop your PDFs in. One or many. The first file also pulls down the PDF engine, which takes a moment on a slow connection and then never again while the page is open.
Check the label on each row. The tool reads the first three pages and marks the file Scanned, Text or Mixed, so you can see what you are dealing with before you start.
Pick Strong or Light. Strong is for scans and image-heavy files. Light is for anything made of real text. A text file that lands in the queue is switched to Light for you, because Strong would make it bigger.
For Strong, choose the quality. Low is 72 dpi, Medium is 150 dpi and High is 300 dpi. Medium is the usual answer for reading on screen and sending by email.
Press Compress, then download. Each row has its own download button, and Download all zips everything that finished.

More free tools

Built for our own work, free for yours. No sign-up on any of them.

Font Clamp

Fluid clamp() for font size and its matching line height, across a whole type scale.

Email Signature Generator

Make a professional email signature that holds its shape in Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail. Fill in your details, pick a layout, copy it and paste it in.

QR Code Generator

Generate styled QR codes with custom colors, dot styles, and logos.

Schema Markup Generator

Build valid JSON-LD for a local business, service, FAQ, article or breadcrumb trail, with every property Google treats as required checked before you paste it.

Meta Tag Preview

See how your page will look as a Google result and as a Facebook, X or LinkedIn card, then copy the tags. Measured by pixel width, which is what actually gets cut.

Color Contrast Checker

Check any two colors against the WCAG contrast rules, get the nearest shade that passes, and convert between HEX, RGB and HSL.

Case Converter

Switch text between sentence case, title case, camelCase, snake_case, and more.

UTM Builder

Tag your campaign links so analytics can tell where the traffic came from. Build a whole campaign at once and take the set out as a CSV.

Image Resizer

Resize images to any width, height or preset size, crop to fit, and convert the format. Batch, and nothing is uploaded.

Merge PDF

Join several PDFs into one file, in the order you choose. Nothing is uploaded and no quality is lost.

Split PDF

Split a PDF into separate files, or pull out only the pages you need. Pick them from thumbnails or type ranges.

Favicon Generator

Generate a complete favicon package, download as ZIP with HTML snippet.

Image Converter

Convert images to WebP, PNG, or JPG. Batch upload and download as a ZIP.

What people use a PDF compressor for

Nearly always because something else refuses to accept the file at its current size.

Emailing a scanned contract

A scan at 300 dpi is often tens of megabytes and will bounce off a mailbox limit. Strong at Medium brings it down to something that sends.

Uploading to a portal with a size cap

Visa, tender and job portals frequently cap a PDF at 2 MB or 5 MB. Step down through Medium and Low until the figure on screen fits.

Cleaning metadata before sharing

Light clears the title, author, subject, keywords, producer and creator fields and removes the XMP metadata block, which is where an old file name or a colleague’s name usually hides.

Trimming a photo-heavy brochure

A design export carries images at full print resolution. Strong redraws each page at the resolution you actually need for screen.

A batch of receipts or invoices

Add the whole folder, compress once and take them back as one ZIP rather than repeating the same job file by file.

Archiving a pile of old scans

Low at 72 dpi keeps a page readable on screen at a fraction of the size, which is the right trade when the paper original still exists.

Frequently asked questions

Which setting to use, why a text file can grow, and what happens to your text.

Are my PDFs uploaded anywhere?

No. Your files are read in the browser with the standard file API, compressed in your own tab and handed straight back. Nothing is sent to us, nothing is stored, and there is nothing on a server to delete afterwards. The page does send anonymous usage figures: counts of files compressed, files downloaded and visits, plus the shape of each job: the mode and quality, whether the file looked scanned or typed, its page count, the percent saved and a rough size band. Never the file, its name or anything in it.

Why did my file get BIGGER instead of smaller?

Because Strong works by redrawing every page as a photograph of itself. On a scan that is a large saving. On an ordinary text document it is a disaster: a 6.5 KB six-page text file measured here came back 336 KB at Low and 4.34 MB at High. A page of text stored as letters is tiny; the same page stored as an image is not. When that happens this tool keeps your original file, tells you on the row, and gives you the original when you press download, so you can never end up with something worse than you started with. Use Light for text documents.

What is the difference between Strong and Light?

Strong rasterises each page to a JPEG at the resolution you pick and rebuilds the document from those images. The pages look the same but the text stops being text, so it can no longer be selected, copied, searched or read aloud by a screen reader. Light does not touch the pages at all. It rewrites the file structure more compactly and strips the metadata, so everything stays selectable and the saving is much smaller, often only a few per cent on a file that is already tidy.

Which quality setting should I choose?

Medium, at 150 dpi, unless you have a reason not to. It is comfortable to read on any screen and it is what most email and upload limits are happy with. Low, at 72 dpi, is for when a size cap is the only thing that matters and the page just has to be legible. High, at 300 dpi, is print resolution and saves far less, so it is only worth it if the file is going to a printer.

Will my text still be selectable afterwards?

With Light, yes, and nothing about the pages changes. With Strong, no. That is not a limitation of this tool, it is what rasterising means: every page becomes an image, so there are no longer any characters in the file to select. If the document needs to stay searchable or accessible, Light is the only option of the two.

Can it open a password-protected PDF?

No. A PDF with an open password cannot be read without it, so the file is marked with an error and a message asking you to remove the password first. Nothing is guessed and nothing is bypassed. Remove the password in whatever application you normally use, then bring the file back.

How big a file can it handle?

There is no limit written into the tool, but there is a real one in your device. Every page is drawn onto a canvas at full resolution before it is compressed, so a very long document at High quality uses a lot of memory and a phone will give up sooner than a desktop. If a large file struggles, try Medium or Low, which use a quarter and a sixteenth of the pixels respectively. Pages larger than roughly A1 are automatically capped at 8192 pixels on the longest side, because beyond that browsers stop drawing.

Does the page size or layout change?

No. Each page keeps its exact original size in points, including its orientation and any rotation, and the image is drawn to fill it. A compressed A4 page is still A4, so it prints and binds the same as before. Only the amount of detail inside the page changes.

Why does the first file take longer than the rest?

The PDF engine is about 1.75 MB and is only fetched when you add your first file, so that visitors who never use the tool never download it. Once it has arrived it stays for as long as the page is open, and every file after the first starts immediately.

What does the Scanned or Text label mean?

The tool looks at up to the first three pages, counts how much real text is there and whether the page is painting images, and labels the file accordingly. It is only a hint, and it is there so you are not told to rasterise a document that would triple in size. You can override it with the Strong and Light buttons at any time.