How it works
Each page of your PDF is rendered to a JPEG image at a quality level that brings the total under your target. The pages are then re-packaged into a new PDF. This is the same technique most "compress PDF" tools use — but we run it entirely in your browser, so your document is never uploaded anywhere.
How to use this page
- Drop your PDF into the box above.
- Pick a target size — 100 KB for strict portals (some Indian exam forms), 500 KB for most uploads, 1 MB for general use.
- Click "Compress now". We rasterize each page, encode as JPEG, and rebuild the PDF to fit your target. First compression takes a few seconds as the PDF libraries load.
- Download the compressed PDF and upload to your form.
Your PDF never leaves your device. Compression runs entirely in your browser. We do not store, log, share, or even see your documents — there is no server-side processing.
What's the trade-off?
The output PDF contains images of each page, not the original text. This means:
- Selectable text becomes part of the page image (not selectable after compression)
- File-size targets are achievable for almost any input
- Text remains readable at normal viewing sizes
For most use cases — passport scans, certificates, ID cards, receipts, supporting documents — this is the right trade-off. If you need to preserve selectable/searchable text, only mild compression is recommended (try a target of 1 MB or larger first).
Common file size limits
- Compress PDF to 100 KB — strict Indian government exam portals
- Compress PDF to 200 KB — visa documents, KYC uploads
- Compress PDF to 300 KB — certificate uploads, scholarship forms
- Compress PDF to 500 KB — most application portals, supporting documents
- Compress PDF to 1 MB — general uploads, email attachments
- Compress PDF to 2 MB — generous limits, multi-page documents
Frequently asked questions
Is my PDF really not uploaded anywhere?
Correct. Everything runs in your browser using JavaScript libraries (pdf.js for reading, pdf-lib for writing). Your PDF never reaches our server. You can verify this in your browser's Network tab — you'll see no PDF upload requests.
Why does the first compression take longer?
The first time you click "Compress now", we load the PDF processing libraries (about 2 MB). Subsequent compressions are much faster because they're cached. We chose this lazy-loading approach so that visitors who don't need PDF compression don't pay the bandwidth cost.
What if my PDF is huge — say 100 MB?
The tool can handle large PDFs, but processing time scales with page count and size. A 100-page PDF may take 30 seconds to a minute. Memory limits in some browsers (especially mobile Safari) may cause issues with PDFs over ~50 MB. If you hit a problem, try splitting the PDF first using any PDF tool, then compressing each part.
Can I preserve searchable text?
Not with this tool — we rasterize each page to hit aggressive file-size targets. If your PDF contains selectable text and you need to preserve it, use a desktop PDF tool that does "lossless" optimisation, or pick a larger target size here (1 MB or more) so the rasterization isn't visible to the eye.
Which PDFs compress best?
Scanned documents — passport scans, certificates, ID cards, signed declarations — compress extremely well because they're already image-based. Born-digital PDFs (created from Word, Google Docs, etc.) compress less aggressively because they often contain efficient text encoding the rasterization step can't beat.