PDF-006
Compress PDF
This compressor rasterises each page to a JPEG and rebuilds the document around it. That is very effective on scans and image-heavy files, and the wrong choice for a text document - so the tool tells you which one you have before you commit.
- Free
- No signup
- Private · runs locally
How to compress pdf
- Upload the PDF you want to shrink.
- Choose a quality level. Lower quality means a smaller file and softer images.
- Compare the resulting size with the original, then download if the saving is worth it.
What compression costs you
Rasterising a page turns it into a picture of itself. Everything that made it a document goes away: selectable text, working links, form fields, bookmarks and accessibility tags.
For a scanned contract or a photo-heavy brochure that is a fair trade, because the pages were already images. For a CV, an invoice or anything a machine has to read, it is a bad trade - the recipient can no longer search it, and applicant tracking systems will see a blank page.
If the file is mostly text and simply too big, the size is usually coming from embedded fonts or a few oversized images. Re-exporting from the source document beats compressing here.
When this tool refuses to help
If re-encoding would make the file larger, the tool says so and produces nothing. A PDF that is already well optimised has no slack left, and handing you a bigger file labelled compressed would be dishonest.
That outcome is common with text-only PDFs exported from Word or LaTeX. It is a signal that compression is the wrong tool, not that the file is broken.
Frequently asked questions
Is my PDF uploaded to a server?
No. The file is opened and rewritten by your browser, so it never leaves your device. That matters for contracts, invoices and anything with personal data in it.
Why did my PDF get bigger instead of smaller?
Because it was already efficiently stored. Turning crisp text into a JPEG adds data rather than removing it. When that happens the tool refuses to produce a file.
Will the text still be selectable afterwards?
No. Compression converts pages to images, so text becomes pixels. Use this only when the visual result is all that matters.
How much smaller will my file be?
Scanned documents often drop by 50-80%. Text-based PDFs usually gain little or nothing, because there was no image data to squeeze.