Reduce your PDF file size while keeping quality as high as possible.
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Compression Level
LowMinimal compression, best quality. Uses PDF re-rendering.
MediumGood balance. Uses Ghostscript ebook settings if available.
HighMaximum compression, reduced image quality.
Medium and High compression use Ghostscript for better results. If Ghostscript is not installed, Low-level re-rendering is used automatically.
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Reduce a PDF's file size for emailing, uploading, or storage, while keeping the document as readable as possible.
How It Works
How Compress PDF Works
When available, compression is handled by Ghostscript, which re-encodes embedded images at a lower resolution/quality and strips redundant data. The "Medium" level uses Ghostscript's /ebook preset (a balance of size and quality), and "High" uses the /screen preset (maximum compression, more visible image quality loss).
If Ghostscript is not available on the server, the tool falls back to re-rendering the PDF page-by-page, which still removes unused/duplicate objects and metadata bloat, though the size reduction is smaller than with Ghostscript's image re-encoding.
Compression works best on PDFs with large embedded images (scanned documents, photo-heavy reports); PDFs that are mostly text are usually already small and will shrink less.
Worked Example
See It In Action
A 12 MB scanned PDF with high-resolution photos often compresses to 2–4 MB at the Medium setting — enough to fit under typical email attachment limits — while a text-only 500 KB PDF might only shrink by a few percent, since there's little redundant image data to remove.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I compress a PDF to a specific size, like 200 KB?
Try the High compression level first, which uses the most aggressive image downsampling. If the result is still above your target size, the PDF likely contains many large images — consider removing non-essential pages/images first, then re-compressing.
Will compressing reduce text quality?
No — text and vector graphics stay sharp at any compression level. Only embedded raster images (photos, scans) are re-encoded at lower quality to save space.
Why didn't my file get much smaller?
If your PDF is mostly text or already has optimized images, there is little redundant data to remove, so the size reduction will be modest regardless of the compression level chosen.
Is my file uploaded and stored permanently?
Your file is processed securely on the server for the compression operation and is not retained afterward.
