PDF Compressor

What this tool does

This tool shrinks a PDF's file size so it is easier to email or upload, and it does the whole job in your browser. You pick how much to compress, and it rebuilds the document at a smaller size, with the file never leaving your device.

How to use it

1. Select your PDF file.
2. Choose a JPEG Quality level. A lower percentage compresses harder and gives a smaller file; a higher one keeps more detail but saves less.
3. Press Compress, then download the result. Reset clears everything to try again with a different setting.

How it works

The tool draws each page of your PDF onto a canvas, turns that into a JPEG image at the quality you chose, and rebuilds a new PDF from those images. Lower quality means more compression and a smaller file. All of this happens on your device, so your PDF is never uploaded to a server, which is the trade many of the big online compressors ask you to make in exchange for their results.

What this method does well, and what it does not

Being upfront about how this works saves you a surprise, because the image-based approach has a clear best use and a clear limitation.

It shines on scanned documents and image-heavy PDFs. Those are already made of images, so recompressing them is exactly the right move and the size savings can be large. Where it does not fit is a text-based PDF. Because every page is turned into an image, two things follow: the text in the result is no longer selectable or searchable, since it has become part of a picture, and a text-only file may shrink very little or even grow, because plain text is far more compact than an image of it. So reach for this when you have a bulky scan to slim down, and skip it when you need to keep selectable text or you are starting from a lightweight text document. The big online compressors take a different route, optimising the PDF's internal structure on their servers so text survives, but that means uploading your file; this tool trades that capability for keeping your document entirely private.

Choosing a quality level

The quality setting is a direct trade between size and clarity. A low setting squeezes the file the most but can leave images looking soft or blocky, while a high setting keeps things crisp but saves less space. The middle option is a sensible starting point: compress once, check how the result looks and how small it got, and adjust up or down from there. There is no single right answer, since it depends on whether your priority is a tiny file or a clean-looking one.

Questions people ask