Compress PDF

Reduce a PDF's file size — either losslessly, or by rasterising pages for a much bigger reduction.

This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your data is never uploaded, never stored, and never leaves your device.

Makes a PDF smaller in one of two ways: a tidy-up that rewrites the file and drops what is not needed while leaving every page exactly as it was, or a rasterise pass that redraws each page as a JPEG for a much larger reduction at the cost of the text.

How to use it

1Drop in a PDF — the file name, size and page count appear so you can confirm it read the right document.
2Pick Tidy up to keep text selectable, or Rasterise and set quality and resolution for a bigger cut.
3Press Compress PDF, check the before-and-after sizes, then download.

Example

Input: A 35-page, 2.22 MB report
Output: Tidy up returned 1.99 MB with all 35 pages and every character of text still extractable. Rasterise at the default settings returned 1.87 MB — same 35 pages, but nothing selectable left on them.

Those are measured figures from one real file, not a promise: a PDF full of photographs can lose most of its weight, while an already-optimised one may not shrink at all. If the result comes out larger than what you put in — which genuinely happens when you rasterise a text document — the page says so and tells you to keep your original instead of handing you the bigger file under a Download button.

What happens to your data

pdf-lib does the rewriting and pdf.js does the page rendering, both inside this tab, and a network panel left open during a run records no upload of the document. That matters more here than on most tools, because the PDFs people want to shrink are the ones they are about to email: contracts, scans of a passport, a portfolio, medical paperwork. The tidy-up path also clears the document title, author, subject, keywords, creator and producer fields, so the copy you send does not still carry your name or the software you drafted it in.

Last updated August 2026

The reason to compress a PDF is almost always an external limit: an email attachment that bounces, an upload that caps at 5 MB, a portal that will not take the scan your phone produced. Making a PDF smaller is easy; making it smaller without quietly ruining it is the part most tools skip.

There are two honest ways to shrink a PDF and this offers both, with the trade stated before you press anything. A tidy-up rewrites the file and drops what is not needed, leaving every page exactly as it was and every character still selectable. A rasterise pass redraws each page as an image, which cuts far more — and destroys the text.\n\nPeople ask for this in a dozen ways \u2014 reduce PDF size, shrink PDF, make PDF smaller, reduce PDF file size \u2014 and they all describe the same goal: a file that will send. It is compress PDF free here, with no daily cap and no watermark. The one thing worth knowing is that compress PDF online normally means uploading the document to somebody's server first; here the work happens in your browser, which matters when the file is a contract or a scan of an ID.

How it works

Toolvore does both passes in your browser with pdf-lib and pdf.js. The tidy-up reloads and re-saves the document, discarding orphaned objects and redundant structure. Rasterising renders each page to a canvas at the resolution you choose, encodes it as a JPEG at your quality setting and rebuilds the PDF from those images. If the result comes out bigger than the original — which genuinely happens when a text-heavy document is rasterised, because letters stored as instructions are far smaller than a photograph of letters — it retries once at a lower setting, and if that still loses it tells you to keep your original rather than handing you a larger file behind a Download button.

Common use cases

Reducing a PDF so it fits under an email attachment limit
Making a scanned document smaller before uploading it to a portal
Shrinking a photo-heavy report that is slow to open or share
Cutting a PDF file down without losing the ability to search its text — use the tidy-up pass
Preparing a large document for a form that caps upload size

Frequently asked questions

How do I compress a PDF without losing text?＋

Choose the tidy-up pass. It rewrites the file and drops what is not needed, but never touches the page content, so every character stays selectable and searchable. It shrinks less than rasterising — that is the trade.

Can I compress a PDF to an exact size like 100 KB?＋

Not here. This tool gives you two passes and a quality setting rather than a byte target, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise — but a PDF's size depends so heavily on what is inside it that a target-size mode would fail on most documents. The image compressor does target an exact size, because for a single image that is a solvable problem.

Why did my PDF get bigger?＋

You rasterised a document that is mostly text. Letters stored as drawing instructions take far less space than a photograph of those letters, so turning pages into images can easily cost more than it saves. The tool notices, retries at a lower setting, and if it still cannot win it says so and tells you to keep your original.

How much smaller will my file get?＋

It depends entirely on the file. A 35-page report measured here went from 2.22 MB to 1.99 MB on the tidy-up pass and 1.87 MB rasterised. A PDF full of large photographs can lose most of its weight; one that has already been optimised may not shrink at all.

Is my document uploaded to be compressed?＋

No. Both passes run in your browser. That matters here more than most places — the PDFs people compress are contracts, scans of identity documents and medical letters.

Why is a scanned PDF so much larger than a typed one?＋

A PDF exported from a word processor stores characters and instructions, which are tiny. A scan stores a photograph of every page, which is not. That is why a two-page scan can outweigh a fifty-page report, and it is also why compressing a scan works well while compressing a typed document often does almost nothing — the images are where the weight is, and a typed file has none.

Will compressing make the text blurry?＋

Not the text. Characters in a text-based PDF are stored as instructions for drawing letterforms, not as pixels, so they are untouched by image compression and stay sharp at any zoom. What can soften is embedded photographs and the page images inside a scan. If your file is a scan, the text is part of the picture and will soften — which is the trade for the size, and why it is worth checking the result before sending anything that has to be read closely.

What size do email attachments actually allow?＋

Most services cap a message at around 20–25 MB including encoding overhead, which is why a 24 MB attachment can still bounce. If a file will not send, aim comfortably below the limit rather than just under it. Where a document is only being read rather than printed, a link often beats an attachment.

Does compressing twice make it smaller again?＋

Rarely, and it can make things worse. The first pass removes the slack — unused objects, duplicated resources, oversized images. A second pass has little left to find, and if it re-encodes images that were already lossy it degrades them further for almost no saving. If one pass has not got you where you need to be, reducing the page count or the source image size will do more than compressing again.