Compress PDFs for Free — Reduce PDF File Size Online
Processed on our servers — auto-deleted within 1 hour, never used for anything else.
Scanned contracts, image-heavy reports, and slide exports regularly balloon past 20 MB until email refuses them. Pick a compression level — from maximum squeezing for email to light touch for print — and our servers re-encode the document with Ghostscript, the same engine print shops use. Files are auto-deleted within 1 hour and never used for anything else.
How it works
- 1
Add your PDF
Drop the file into the box or click to browse. Files up to 95 MB.
- 2
Pick a compression level
Extreme for the smallest file, Balanced for everyday use, Light to keep print-quality detail.
- 3
Download the smaller PDF
Our servers compress the document and delete it automatically within 1 hour.
About this tool
How PDF compression actually works
A PDF is a container: its size is dominated by embedded images and fonts. Real compression re-encodes those images at a lower resolution and stronger JPEG quality, merges duplicate images, and subsets fonts to only the glyphs used — that is what shrinks a 40 MB scan to a few megabytes. Simply re-saving a PDF in a viewer cannot do this, which is why this tool runs Ghostscript on our servers rather than pretending the browser can do it.
Choosing between extreme, balanced, and light
Extreme targets screen reading: images downsample to 72 DPI, which makes scanned documents tiny and perfect for email or web upload forms, at the cost of print quality. Balanced targets 150 DPI — the sweet spot for sharing reports, CVs, and study material that must stay comfortably readable on screens and still print acceptably. Light keeps 300 DPI detail for documents heading to a printer, trimming the fat (duplicate images, uncompressed fonts, metadata overhead) while preserving visual fidelity. If your first result looks too soft, re-run the original at a lighter level; the original file on your device is never touched.
What happens to your file on our servers
The document is uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed by Ghostscript, and stored just long enough for you to download the result — every trace, including the original and the compressed copy, is deleted automatically within 1 hour. Files are never used for anything else, never shared, and never used for training. The download link is cryptographically signed and expires with the file. For documents that must never leave your device at all, our other PDF tools (merge, split, rotate) run entirely in your browser.
When compression helps — and when it cannot
Image-heavy files benefit most: scanned documents, photo portfolios, presentation exports, and forms with stamps or signatures routinely shrink by 60–90%. A PDF that is already pure vector text with no images (for example, one generated from LaTeX) has little to remove and may barely shrink — that is the format doing its job, not a failure. Encrypted or password-protected PDFs must be unlocked first. If the compressed result is larger than the source, try a lighter preset; extreme settings on an already-optimized file can occasionally add overhead.
Frequently asked questions
- How much smaller will my PDF get?
- Scanned and image-heavy documents typically shrink 60–90%. Pure-text vector PDFs have little to remove and may barely shrink — that means the file was already efficient.
- Which compression level should I pick?
- Extreme for email and web forms where size matters most; Balanced for everyday sharing; Light when the document will be printed and detail matters.
- Is my document private?
- It is processed on our servers and auto-deleted within 1 hour — original and result. The download link is signed and expires with the file. Nothing is ever reused.
- Why does this tool need a server when other PDF tools do not?
- Real compression re-encodes embedded images — something browsers cannot do. Merge, split, and rotate manipulate structure, which the browser handles; compression needs Ghostscript.
- What is the maximum file size?
- 95 MB per file, which covers the vast majority of documents. For larger files, split it first (our split tool runs in your browser) and compress the parts.
- Will the text stay selectable and searchable?
- Yes — Ghostscript preserves the text layer. Only images are re-encoded, so you can still search, copy, and select text normally.