Online PDF Compressor

Drop your PDF files and instantly reduce their size. Our engine uses Ghostscript to recompress images, remove metadata, optimize fonts, and consolidate objects — shrinking PDFs by 50-90% while preserving text, layout, and vector graphics.

Drop PDF files here — scanned or digital

PDF

Max 100MB per file • No signup required

Secure SSL Encrypted Auto-deleted in 1 hour

How It Works

1

Upload Images

Drag and drop or click to select image files. We support JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, and more.

2

Choose Settings

Pick a quality preset — Lossless, Recommended, or Extreme — and optionally resize for web.

3

Download

Get compressed files instantly. Download individually or all at once as a ZIP archive.

50K+
Images Compressed
8+
Formats Supported
~60%
Average Savings
100%
Free & Secure

Frequently Asked Questions

Will compressing my PDF affect text quality?
No. Text and vector graphics are preserved at 100% quality. Only embedded raster images are recompressed, and at the Recommended setting, the difference is invisible on screen.
Can I compress a scanned PDF?
Absolutely — scanned PDFs benefit the most from compression. Since every page is a large image, we can typically reduce the file by 70-90% while keeping text readable.
What's the maximum PDF file size I can upload?
You can upload PDF files up to 100MB per file. For most documents, compression takes just a few seconds.
Is my PDF safe? Do you store my files?
Your files are processed on our secure server and automatically deleted within 1 hour. We never read, share, or store your document content.
What's the difference between the three quality presets?
Lossless (300 DPI) preserves print quality. Recommended (150 DPI) gives 50-70% reduction with no visible quality loss on screen. Extreme (72 DPI) provides maximum compression for web-only use.

PDF Compression: How It Works, Quality Settings & Best Practices

PDF compression is the process of reducing the file size of a PDF document without destroying its content. Large PDFs are one of the most common causes of email bounce-backs and slow cloud uploads.

Why PDFs Get So Large

The biggest factor is embedded images. A single high-resolution photo embedded at 300 DPI can add 5-10MB. Scanned documents are the worst offenders — each page is a full-resolution image, often at 200-600 DPI.

Three Compression Levels

  • Lossless (300 DPI): Print-quality output. Images retain full resolution. Ideal for archival or professional printing.
  • Recommended (150 DPI): The sweet spot. Reduces files by 50-70% with no visible quality loss on screen. Perfect for sharing, email, and web.
  • Extreme (72 DPI): Maximum compression. Images are reduced to screen resolution. Great for quick review or web-only use.

What Gets Optimized

  • Image recompression: The biggest win — embedded images are re-encoded at optimized quality settings.
  • Object deduplication: Repeated elements (fonts, images) are stored once instead of many times.
  • Metadata removal: Author info, creation dates, revision history, and hidden data are stripped.
  • Font subsetting: Only the characters actually used are embedded, not the entire font file.
  • Stream compression: Internal data streams are recompressed with more efficient algorithms.

Scanned PDFs vs Digital PDFs

Scanned PDFs see the biggest improvements because each page is a large raster image. Compression can reduce them by 70-90%. Digital PDFs (created from Word, LaTeX, etc.) are already more efficient but still benefit from image recompression and object optimization — typical savings of 30-60%.

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