Reduce PDF file size by up to 85% — choose from four compression levels for the perfect balance of quality and size. 100% private — your file never leaves your device.
Free Compress PDF – Reduce PDF File Size Online
Need to reduce the size of a PDF file? Our free online Compress PDF tool makes it easy. Large PDFs are a common problem — they exceed email attachment limits, upload slowly to online portals, take up unnecessary storage, and frustrate the people who receive them. Whether you are emailing a scanned contract, uploading a report to a job application, submitting a tax document, or archiving a folder full of PDFs, compression makes everything faster and easier. This tool runs entirely in your browser: no upload, no signup, no watermarks, and your confidential documents stay completely private on your device.
Using the tool is straightforward. Drag a PDF into the drop zone or click to browse. The tool reads the file and shows you the total number of pages and the original file size. Then choose one of four compression levels. Preserve Text performs lossless structural optimization — the PDF stays text-searchable and selectable, ideal for documents where you need to copy or search text. It typically saves 5–15%. Light, Balanced, and Maximum modes re-render each page as a compressed image at progressively smaller sizes and lower quality — these can reduce file size by 25–85%, and are perfect for scanned documents, image-heavy brochures, and photo albums. A colorful progress indicator shows each page being processed in real time. When compression is done, the tool shows you the original size, the new size, and the percentage saved — then downloads the compressed PDF automatically.
Why Compress PDF Files?
Large PDF files cause many everyday problems. Most email services cap attachments at 25 MB — a single scanned document or brochure can easily exceed this. Many online portals and government forms reject files above 2–10 MB. Slow uploads waste time on mobile connections. Cloud storage fills up quickly when documents are unnecessarily large. Compression solves all these issues in one step, making your PDF easier to send, quicker to upload, and more considerate of the recipient's inbox and bandwidth. The smaller file also opens faster in browsers and on mobile devices, which matters when you are on a slow connection or reading on a phone. For businesses, compressed PDFs are cheaper to store and faster to back up, and for students or job applicants, they are often the difference between a submission being accepted or rejected by a portal that enforces a strict size limit.
Four Compression Levels — Pick the Right One
Every PDF is different, and there is no single compression setting that works best for all of them. That is why this tool offers four distinct modes. Preserve Text keeps the PDF fully searchable and selectable — it re-encodes the file's internal structure losslessly so text remains crisp and copyable. This is the correct choice for contracts, reports, forms, and any document where the words themselves matter more than the file size. Light renders every page at 144 DPI with high JPEG quality — a good starting point when you want to save some space without a visible quality drop. Balanced is the recommended default: 108 DPI with moderate JPEG compression, which typically cuts file size by 45–70% and still looks clean on screens and standard prints. Maximum pushes to 86 DPI with aggressive JPEG compression and can shrink a file by 60–85%, which is ideal for email attachments and thumbnails but may show visible softness on close inspection. If a compression attempt would actually produce a larger file than the original, the tool detects this and returns the original file untouched, so you never end up with a worse result than you started with.
Private, Fast, and Completely Free
This tool runs entirely inside your browser using JavaScript. Your PDF files never leave your device and are never uploaded to any server, so contracts, invoices, medical records, and personal documents stay completely private. It works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iPhone with no file size limits, no watermarks, and no signups. Whether you are a professional preparing client deliverables, a student submitting assignments, or anyone who just needs to fit a PDF under an upload limit, our Compress PDF tool delivers professional results in one click.