Compress a PDF

Compression that keeps your text real text

The quickest way to make a PDF small is to photograph every page and throw the original away. Many online compressors do exactly that — the file shrinks, and in exchange the text stops being text. You can no longer select it, copy it, search it, or read it with a screen reader, and it turns blurry the moment anyone zooms in.

This compressor never rasterizes. It works in two stages: first a lossless structural re-save that strips unused objects and leftover revision data — a pure size win with nothing lost at all — and then, only if the file is still bigger than you want, re-encoding the photographic images inside it at the quality level you picked. Text, vector graphics, links and bookmarks are carried across untouched.

How much smaller will your PDF get?

It depends almost entirely on what is inside it, and the honest answer is that no compressor can beat physics here.

Scanned documents and photo-heavy files

The big winners. These are mostly image data, and reductions of 50–90% are common with no visible change at normal reading size.

Presentations and brochures

Usually a solid saving, since the large photographs compress well while the text and shapes stay crisp.

Text-only documents

Already compact. Expect a modest gain from the structural re-save; there is simply not much data to remove.

Files exported from design tools

Often carry hidden revision history and unused resources, which the lossless pass removes before touching a single image.

Choosing a quality level

Recommended is the setting to reach for first. It targets a substantial size reduction while keeping scanned pages clearly readable on screen and in print at normal sizes.

Step up the strength when a hard limit matters more than fidelity — an upload portal that refuses anything over 5 MB, for example. Step down when the document contains photographs, diagrams or fine detail that someone will zoom into. Nothing is destructive on your side: your original file on disk is never modified, so you can try a level, look at the result, and try again.

When a PDF will not compress much

If a file barely shrinks, it is usually already optimised — the images inside it have been compressed before, and re-compressing already-compressed data gains little while costing quality. Squeezing a PDF that is mostly text below a few hundred kilobytes generally means removing content, not compressing it.

In that case, the better move is often structural: delete pages you do not need, split the document into parts, or convert a handful of high-resolution photographs before they are placed into the PDF.