Compress PDF — Shrink File Size in Your Browser
Drop one or more PDFs and pick a compression mode. Light re-saves with object streams and strips metadata — best for PDFs whose bulk is structural. Aggressive rasterises every page to a JPEG at your chosen DPI — the big lever for image-heavy or scanned PDFs, at the cost of selectable text. Everything runs locally; your files never leave your browser.
Drop your PDF files here
Drop one or many · same settings applied to each · size up to your browser's memory
When to use this tool
Use Light for text-heavy PDFs whose bulk comes from structural overhead, embedded fonts, or bloated metadata — it preserves selectable text and accuracy. Use Aggressive when the file is dominated by images or scanned pages: every page is rendered at the DPI you pick and re-embedded as a JPEG, which usually slashes the file by 60–90%. The tradeoff is selectable text and vector content become baked into pixels.
Step by step
- Drop the PDFs. Batch mode applies the same settings to every file.
- Pick a mode. Try Light first; if the saving is modest and your PDF is image-heavy, switch to Aggressive.
- For Aggressive: pick DPI & JPEG quality. 144 dpi at 70% quality is a good "shrink for sharing" default. Drop to 96 dpi for screen-only, raise to 300 dpi for print.
- Click "Compress & download". Each output appears with a green "saved X%" chip showing the before/after size.
FAQ
Light vs. Aggressive — which should I pick?
Light is lossless: it re-saves your PDF, strips metadata, and packs the structure tighter. Aggressive throws away selectable text and vector precision in exchange for much smaller files. If you don't need to copy text from the output, Aggressive is the bigger win on image-heavy PDFs.
Does Light re-render pages?
No — content streams pass through. If you want a real "flatten + reduce" without rasterising, run Flatten PDF first.
What DPI should I use for Aggressive?
96 dpi for email / screen viewing; 144 dpi (default) for general sharing; 200 dpi for casual print; 300 dpi when you actually need print quality. Higher DPI = larger file.
Will OCR still work after Aggressive compression?
Yes — the output is still a real PDF with embedded JPEGs. You can run it through OCR PDF to add a hidden text layer back.
Are my files uploaded?
Never. Compression happens entirely in your browser via pdf-lib (+ pdf.js for rasterise). See the privacy policy.