Compress PDF

1. 1Add the PDF you want to shrink.
2. 2Choose a compression level — Light keeps the most detail, Strong makes the smallest file.
3. 3Press Compress and wait while each page is processed.
4. 4Compare the before and after sizes, then download if you are happy with the result.

Most of the weight in a large PDF is photographic content. Each page is rendered at a resolution matched to the level you pick, re-encoded as a JPEG at the matching quality, and written into a new document. Choosing Light keeps a high render scale and quality; Strong lowers both.

This is a raster approach, which means it is very effective on scans and image-heavy brochures — often 60–90% smaller — and much less effective on documents that are mostly text. Text-only PDFs are already tightly compressed, and rasterising them can even make the file bigger, so the tool tells you when the output is not smaller and lets you keep the original.

One trade-off is worth knowing about: because pages become images, text in the compressed file is no longer selectable or searchable. If you need to keep the text layer, use Split or Extract pages to drop the pages you do not need instead.

The file is read into your browser's memory, changed there, and handed straight back to you. Nothing is uploaded, so there is no queue and no copy sitting on a server afterwards.