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TinyTools

Compress PDF

Reduce the size of your PDF quickly and easily.

Everything is processed on your device. Nothing you upload or type is sent to a server, and nothing is stored.

Compress PDF online

Large PDFs are awkward to email and slow to upload. Almost always the bulk of the file is the photos and scans inside it, not the text — so this tool re-encodes those images at a sensible resolution and leaves your text completely untouched, still sharp and still selectable. Everything happens on your device; the file is never sent to a server.

How to use compress pdf

  1. Upload your PDF

    Drag a PDF into the box above or click to pick one from your device.

  2. Choose a compression level

    Balanced suits almost every document: it shrinks the images inside and leaves the text alone. Light only removes structural overhead. Maximum flattens whole pages into images for the smallest possible file, at the cost of selectable text.

  3. Compress

    Processing runs in your browser. Larger documents take longer, and you will see progress as pages are handled.

  4. Download the result

    Compare the original and compressed sizes, then download the smaller file.

Frequently asked questions

How much can a PDF be compressed?

It depends entirely on what is inside the file. PDFs full of photos or high-resolution scans often shrink by 60–90%, because those images are nearly the whole file. A PDF that is mostly text may only shrink a few percent — text takes up very little space to begin with, so there is simply not much to remove.

Does compressing reduce the quality of my PDF?

Light changes nothing visible at all. Balanced re-encodes the embedded photos and scans at a lower resolution — noticeable only if you zoom right in — while text, lines and diagrams stay perfectly sharp because they are drawn as vectors, not pixels. Maximum reduces everything, text included.

Will the text still be selectable after compressing?

Yes, at both Light and Balanced. This is the main reason to prefer Balanced over Maximum: it can cut a scanned-photo PDF down dramatically while leaving the text fully selectable, copyable and searchable. Only Maximum flattens pages into images and loses that.

Is there a file size limit?

There is no limit set by us, but the work happens in your browser using your device's memory. Files up to roughly 100 MB are usually fine on a desktop computer. Very large files on an older phone may run out of memory.

Are my uploaded files stored?

No. Your PDF is never uploaded anywhere. It is read and processed directly inside your browser, and it disappears from memory as soon as you close or reload the page.

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