Compress PDF
Reduce your PDF's file size — either by picking a quality level or by naming a target size and letting us find the best achievable setting.
🔒 Processed locally in your browser.
Drop a PDF here or click to select
Below 40% quality, small text may become blurry.
Original — first page
Compressed — first page
How to compress a PDF
- Drop your PDF into the box above.
- Pick a quality level, or enter a target size (e.g., 500 KB).
- Optionally click Preview to see the first page before and after.
- Click Compress. For target mode, we try a range of qualities.
- Review the result — download if you're happy, or adjust and try again.
Technical limitations — read this
- Text becomes image. Our compression rasterizes each page. The result is smaller but text is no longer selectable. If you need searchable text, compress before running OCR, or compress a scan.
- Already-small files. If your PDF is mostly text, it might already be near-minimal. We'll tell you honestly when we can't compress further.
- Target sizes are goals, not guarantees. If your target is unreachable without destroying quality, we'll show you the best we achieved and let you decide.
- Multipage performance. Files with hundreds of pages may take a while — rasterizing is CPU-heavy.
Frequently asked
Can I keep text selectable?
Not with our current approach. If you need both smaller size and selectable text, compress first (to images), then run OCR PDF to rebuild a text layer.
Why is my PDF still large after compression?
Because it was already near its minimum. PDFs made of text-only content are small; there's little to trim.
Does target mode guarantee the size?
No. It searches for the best quality that meets the target. If unreachable, we tell you the best result we achieved — never fake it.
Is my file uploaded?
Never. Everything runs in your browser.
Related tools
Related reading
Privacy
Compress PDF processes the selected PDF in your browser rather than sending it to a DSUTILITY PDF-processing server. Your browser may load public libraries needed for the tool, while your device controls memory and processing speed. For sensitive documents, keep the original and follow your own document-handling rules.