Compress PDF

Compress PDF files and shrink their size right in your browser. Open one PDF or a batch of up to 30, pick a quality preset, see an estimated size first, then download each file or all as a ZIP. Tune DPI, image quality or grayscale.

Free to useNo sign-up requiredInstant Results

Compress PDFTry it now — free ▼

🔒 100% private. Your PDFs are compressed right here in your browser and are never uploaded to any server.

Drop your PDF files here

or tap to choose them — add one PDF or a whole batch, pick a quality preset, and shrink them all right in your browser

📄 Choose PDF files

One or many PDFs · compressed on your device · nothing is uploaded

Loading the PDF engine…

Choose a compression level

Grayscale (smaller scans)

Resolution120 DPI

Image quality72%

Lower resolution and quality make a smaller file. The level you pick applies to every PDF in the list. Advanced settings apply to the image presets only.

📊 Estimated result estimate —

Original

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New

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Compressing…

✅

Your compressed PDF is ready

Embed Compress PDF Widget

About Compress PDF

The Compress PDF tool shrinks the file size of one PDF — or a whole batch of them — right inside your browser. Drop in as many PDFs as you like, pick a single quality preset for the lot, watch a live estimate of the new total size, then download each smaller file or all of them as one ZIP. Because everything happens locally on your device, your PDFs are never uploaded to any server, which makes it safe for scans, contracts, bank statements, portfolios and any other private document you would rather not send to the cloud.

Each page is re-rendered at a lower resolution and re-encoded, so the same document downloads as a much smaller file.

How to Compress a PDF

Add your PDF files. Drag one file or a whole batch onto the drop area, or click Choose PDF files. Every file appears in a list with its page count, size and a first-page thumbnail, and you can drop in more at any time or remove one with the ✕ button. They are read in your browser and stay on your device.
Pick a compression level. Choose Keep text, Light, Balanced, Strong or Smallest. The level applies to every file in the list, and a live estimate — sampled from your own pages — shows the total size and the percentage saved before you commit.
Fine-tune (optional). Turn on Grayscale for scanned text, or open Advanced to set the resolution (DPI) and image quality yourself.
Compress and download. Click 🗜 Compress PDF. Files are processed one after another with a progress bar, the before-and-after bar shows exactly how much you saved in total, and each result gets its own download button — plus Download all as ZIP when you compressed more than one.

Which Preset Should I Use?

Preset	Resolution	Best for	Text stays selectable?
📝 Keep text	Unchanged	Files where selectable, searchable text must survive	Yes
🟢 Light	150 DPI	High-detail documents where quality matters most	No (rasterized)
⭐ Balanced	120 DPI	Everyday use — the recommended default	No (rasterized)
🔻 Strong	96 DPI	Email attachments and web uploads	No (rasterized)
🗜 Smallest	72 DPI	Screen-only scanned documents	No (rasterized)

What Makes This Compress PDF Tool Different

🔒 Truly private

No upload, no cloud processing, no account. The compression runs in JavaScript on your own device, so confidential files never leave your computer or phone.

📚 Batch in one click

Queue up to 30 PDFs, pick one quality level for all of them and compress the whole list in a single click. Every file keeps its own download button, and a ZIP button bundles them together.

📊 Live size estimate

See the projected file size and percentage saved before you commit — the estimate is sampled from a real page of your own document, not a generic guess.

🎚 Presets and manual control

Five one-tap presets for common needs, plus Advanced sliders to dial in the exact resolution and image quality, and a grayscale mode for scans.

📝 Keep-text mode

Need searchable text? The Keep text preset re-saves the file losslessly with compact streams instead of turning pages into images.

How the Compression Works

The image presets use a technique called downsampling. Each page is re-drawn onto a canvas at a lower resolution, then re-encoded as a JPEG at a chosen quality level, and a brand-new PDF is assembled from those images. Fewer pixels and lighter JPEG encoding mean a dramatically smaller file — which is why the biggest savings come from scanned or image-heavy PDFs. The trade-off is that rasterizing turns selectable text into a picture. When you must keep the text layer, the Keep text preset re-saves the document with compact object streams and does not rasterize the pages at all.

Common Uses

Shrink a scanned contract so it fits an email size limit, compress a photo-heavy portfolio or brochure before uploading it to a job or grant portal, reduce a bulky slide-deck export for sharing, or make a multi-page scan small enough for a government or bank upload form that caps file size. Batch mode is built for the jobs where the files arrive in bunches: a folder of scanned receipts for an expense claim, every page of a mortgage application, a term's worth of lecture handouts, or an entire set of invoices that all have to squeeze under the same upload limit.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this Compress PDF tool free and private?

Yes. It is completely free and runs entirely in your web browser. Your PDF is never uploaded to any server, so it stays private on your own device, and the compressed file has no watermark and needs no sign-up.

How does the compression work?

For the image presets the tool re-renders each page at a lower resolution and re-encodes it as a JPEG at a chosen quality, then rebuilds a new PDF from those images. Lower resolution and quality mean a smaller file. The Keep text preset instead re-saves the file with compact object streams so the text layer stays selectable.

Which preset should I choose?

Balanced is recommended for most files. Use Light when quality matters most, Strong or Smallest for email attachments and scanned screen-only documents, and Keep text when you must preserve selectable, searchable text.

Will compressing reduce the quality of my PDF?

The image presets do reduce quality slightly, because pages are downsampled and re-encoded as images — that is where the savings come from, and it also turns text into a picture. If you need selectable text, use the Keep text preset, which does not rasterize the pages.

Why did my file not get smaller?

Some PDFs, especially plain-text documents that are already optimized, cannot be shrunk by rasterizing and may even grow. The tool detects this, tells you so, and lets you keep your original file instead of downloading a larger one.

Is there a file size limit?

There is no fixed limit. Because the work happens in your browser, the only practical limit is your device's memory. Very large or high-page-count PDFs simply take a little longer to process.

Can I compress several PDFs at once?

Yes. Drop or choose as many PDFs as you like, up to 30 at a time. They appear as a list, the preset you pick applies to all of them, and one click compresses the whole batch file by file. Each result gets its own download button and, when there is more than one, a Download all as ZIP button as well. If a file in the batch cannot be opened it is simply skipped and the rest still finish.

Can I use different settings for different files?

One preset applies to the whole batch — that is what makes one-click processing possible. If a particular file needs its own settings, remove the others with the ✕ button, compress it on its own, then add the rest back.

Reference this content, page, or tool as:

"Compress PDF" at https://MiniWebtool.com/compress-pdf/ from MiniWebtool, https://MiniWebtool.com/

by miniwebtool team. Updated: Aug 11, 2026