Compress a PDF
Shrink a PDF to a fraction of its size — pick the quality, watch the savings, keep your file private.
How to compress a PDF
- Add your PDF. Drop it above — scanned documents and image-heavy PDFs shrink the most.
- Pick a level. “Balanced” suits most documents, “Extreme” squeezes hardest, or go “Custom” for exact quality & resolution sliders. Grayscale and black & white modes shrink scans even further.
- Compress. You'll see the before/after size and the compressed PDF downloads automatically.
Frequently asked questions
How much smaller will my PDF get?
It depends on the content. Scans and photo-heavy PDFs often shrink 70–90%. PDFs that are already mostly plain text are small to begin with and may shrink less — or occasionally not benefit at all.
Will text still be selectable?
No — each page is rebuilt as an optimized image, which is what makes large reductions possible. The PDF still opens, prints and reads normally everywhere, but you can't select or search text in it. Keep your original for editing.
Is my PDF uploaded?
No. Everything runs in your browser; the document never leaves your device.
When should I use grayscale or black & white?
Grayscale removes color information — ideal for text scans, cutting size further with no readability loss. Black & white (monochrome) is the smallest of all and gives scanned text a crisp, fax-like look.
What if the result is barely smaller?
Try the “Extreme” preset or grayscale mode. If it's still not smaller, your PDF is likely already highly optimized text — in that case the original is the best version and we'd suggest keeping it.