Compress a PDF
Make a PDF smaller by downsizing the photos and scanned images inside it, for free. There is no usage limit. Your PDF is processed in your browser and never uploaded. Text and vector graphics are not compressed, so you can still select and search the text. You can compress PDFs of up to 200 MB per file (50 MB on phones and tablets).
Settings
Images are downsized to 150 dpi and saved again as JPEG at quality 75. Text and vector graphics are kept as they are.
How to use
- 1
Add PDFs
Choose or drop the PDFs to compress. You can add several PDFs at once. PDFs are never uploaded.
- 2
Choose a destination or strength
To fit a destination's limit, choose it under "Destination". If there is no destination, choose a "Compression strength", or choose "Set a size" and enter the "Target size".
- 3
Compress and save
Press "Run" to see the compressed size and how much smaller it got. Save the files one by one or all together as a ZIP file.
About compressing PDFs
What gets compressed is the photos and scanned images inside the PDF. Their resolution is lowered and they are saved again as JPEG. "Compression strength" lowers resolution and quality in the order "Standard", "Strong" and "Smallest size"; the stronger it is, the smaller the file. Text, vector graphics, bookmarks and links stay as they are.
If you choose Hello Work, Mynaportal or e-Tax under "Destination", the tool compresses up to 3 times, changing the level each time, until the file fits that destination's limit. For Mynaportal and e-Tax, the total of all files in the list is kept under the limit. With e-Tax, images are never reduced below the resolution the destination requires. If the file still does not fit after shrinking the images, the tool tells you so. Sizes are counted with 1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes, so that files stay within the limit even at destinations that count 1 MB as 1,048,576 bytes.
Destination limits and requirements
The limits and requirements of the destinations you can choose under "Destination". The values were checked against each destination's official guidance and can differ by procedure.
- Hello Work (Japan)2 MB per file2 MB per fileUp to 4 files; No password-protected PDFsOfficial guidance (checked 2026-10-31)
- Mynaportal (Japan)7 MB in total7 MB in totalNo password-protected PDFs; File names up to 108 charactersOfficial guidance (checked 2026-10-31)
- e-Tax (Japan)14 MB in total14 MB in totalUp to 136 files; 200 dpi or higher; 256 gray levels or more; No password-protected PDFsOfficial guidance (checked 2026-10-31)
Frequently asked questions
Is my PDF sent to a server?
No. Opening, compressing and saving the PDF all happen in the browser on your device. Statistics that help us fix bugs (the page count range, the range of how many images were downsized, the destination you chose, error types and so on) are sent to this site's server. They do not include the content of the PDF, file names or passwords. You can turn the statistics off with the "Send processing statistics" switch at the bottom of the page.
Can I compress a password-protected PDF or one with editing restricted?
Yes. A password-protected PDF can be compressed once you enter its open password, but if the author has restricted editing, you cannot compress it until you enter the permissions password. This tool does not guess passwords, so if you do not know the permissions password, ask the person who created the PDF. The compressed PDF gets the same open password and restrictions as the original, but if you opened the original by entering the permissions password in the "Password to open" field, that permissions password becomes the password to open the compressed PDF. The permissions password is kept only if you entered it; otherwise the original permissions password does not work on the saved PDF.
Which PDFs get smaller?
The more photos and scanned images a PDF contains, the smaller it gets. A PDF with only text and vector graphics has few images to shrink, so it barely gets smaller. Images in formats such as JPEG 2000 and JBIG2, black-and-white (1-bit) images, images with a reduced color palette, images written directly into the page content and images with damaged data are not shrunk. If the PDF does not get smaller, you get the original PDF back unchanged.
Do image colors or quality change?
Yes. Images are saved again as JPEG at a lower resolution, so fine details become coarser. CMYK images for printing are converted to RGB, so the colors may look slightly different in some PDF viewers. Keep the original PDF if you plan to print it. If the PDF has a digital signature, the signature becomes invalid when the PDF is compressed.
Help us improve the service
If a conversion fails, sending us the circumstances helps us track down the cause. Knowing which devices and formats fail most often, and how long processing takes, lets us revise the supported formats and fix the bugs behind them. If you don't mind, leaving this on is a real help.
What is sent
- The tool you used and the settings you chose (output format, quality, etc.)
- Your device specs (GPU, memory, core count)
- The input format with a rough size
- How many files succeeded or failed and how long it took
- The error type and details when something fails
What is never sent
- The files themselves and file names
- Text, subtitles or prompts you add to a video
- The text to be read aloud, voice descriptions, the pronunciation dictionary and saved voices
- The text in PDFs, the text you rewrote or redacted, passwords, font names and the page ranges you enter
- IP addresses
The data goes only to this site's own server, never to a third-party service.
Details sent by specific tools (counts, times, kinds and yes/no only)
In addition to “What is sent”, text to speech and the PDF tools send the following details.
- PDF tools (all)This tool
- The page count range, whether editing is restricted, whether a permissions password was entered, and whether the PDF is signed or encrypted.
- PDF compressionThis tool
- The numbers of inputs and outputs, of images downsized, not downsized and black-and-white, of downsized images whose transparency was also downsized, that stayed lossless or that were converted from CMYK to RGB, and how many times the file was compressed (all as ranges), the kinds of reasons images were not downsized, whether the target size was met and the kind of reason it was not met, the range of how much smaller the file got, whether the original protection was reapplied, and whether the original PDF was returned unchanged.
- Text to speech
- The approximate number of characters and sentences, how many parts the text was generated in, and how long the AI model took to load.
- PDF text editing and redaction
- The numbers of rewrites, deletions, white-outs and redactions, the number of rewritten characters by source (original font or fallback font, the latter as a range) and the fallback typeface, the kinds of reasons why lines cannot be edited, and the number of pages turned into images by redaction and the reasons.
- PDF page operations and conversion between images and PDF
- The numbers of inputs and outputs, of pages rotated, deleted, duplicated or moved, of images inserted as they are, converted, in HEIC format or with corrected orientation, and of pages rendered at a lower resolution (all as ranges), whether the original was updated in place or a new document was created, and whether the original protection was reapplied, form fields were written into the page and bookmarks were added back.
- PDF cropping and page numbers
- The numbers of inputs and outputs and of pages cropped, numbered or with their margins reduced (all as ranges), how the margins were set, how the pages to crop or number were chosen, the number format and position, the range of the starting number, that the original was updated in place, and whether the original protection was reapplied.