Compress a PDF
Shrink PDF file size for email and upload limits.
Drop your PDF here
PDF · up to 100 MB · runs entirely in your browser
Processed in your browser. This file never leaves your device.
How to compress a PDF
- 01
Add your PDF
Drop the file into the box above.
- 02
Choose how
Rebuild keeps every page exactly as it is. Flatten to images is for scans, and trades the text layer for a much smaller file.
- 03
Compress
The before and after sizes are shown, including when the file did not get smaller.
- 04
Download
Save the result, or keep your original if it was already smaller.
Frequently asked questions
Rebuild first — it is lossless and takes a second. If the file is a scan and still too large, flatten to images: a photographed page compresses enormously as a JPEG, and it had no text layer to lose in the first place.
Because it was already efficiently written, or because you flattened a text document. Sharp type stores far more compactly as text than as a picture of text, so rasterising a report inflates it. The tool tells you when this happens rather than handing over a larger file called 'compressed'.
No. Compression happens inside your browser, so the document never touches a server — which also means it keeps working offline.
Because a browser cannot re-encode the images already embedded in a PDF without decoding formats like JBIG2 and JPEG 2000, which is what Ghostscript-class tooling does on a server. What runs here is the part that needs no server: repacking the file, and re-rendering pages when you ask for it.
Rebuild keeps page content intact. Flattening to images replaces the pages, so form fields, links and annotations do not survive that mode — it is a picture of the page.
Using a Mac, iPhone, Windows, Android or Chromebook?
Each guide covers the built-in way on that device, where it falls short, and how to do the same job here.
Related tools
- PDF to JPGRender each page as a JPG image at the resolution you choose.
- Merge PDFCombine multiple PDFs into a single document. Reorder files before merging — everything happens in your browser.
- Split PDFSplit a PDF by page ranges, into fixed-size chunks, or into one file per page.
- PDF to WordTurn the text in a PDF into an editable Word document.