Compress PDF

Cut PDF file sizes down to email-friendly weights — pick screen, e-book or print quality. Free in your browser — no sign-up, no watermarks.

Drop your PDF files here

or click to browse — Select multiple files for batch conversion

pdf

⚡ Instant — conversion starts the moment you add files. No sign-up, no watermarks. Why FileHugger

🔍 How your file is processed

Runs: In your browser on this page
Engine: pdf.js re-renders each page at your chosen quality; our own PDF writer rebuilds the file from those JPEG pages
Max input: 512 MB per file
Your file: Processed in this browser tab — the file is not uploaded. Converted results are kept in this browser's local storage for up to two hours so their matching download page can show them; expired results are removed on the next site visit. Nothing is stored on our servers.
Good to know: Compression rasterizes pages at the selected quality — text is no longer selectable in the compressed file. Keep the original if you need editable text.

Full security & file-privacy details →

Related converters

How to compress a PDF online

Click Choose files (or drag & drop) and select one or more PDF files. You can also paste them from your file manager.
Pick a quality level: Extreme for the smallest files, Recommended for a strong balance, Light for near-print quality.
Press Compress PDF. Processing runs with a live progress indicator.
Open the download page to save your files individually or grab everything as a single ZIP.

Why compress a PDF?

Upload forms cap at 10 MB, mail servers bounce big attachments, and scans are routinely ten times larger than they need to be. Pick a quality level and every page is rebuilt at that resolution — scans and image-heavy files often shrink by 70-90%. If compression cannot beat your original, you get the original back, never a bigger file.

What this tool preserves — and what it changes

✓ Preserved

Page count, page order and the visual appearance at the chosen quality level
Nothing is uploaded — rendering and rebuilding happen in your browser

↺ Changed

Pages are re-rendered as JPEG images at 72/110/150 DPI — text stops being selectable and searchable
Links, bookmarks and form fields are painted flat
The size drop depends on the source: scans shrink dramatically, already-optimized PDFs less so

Known limits & edge cases

Encrypted PDFs are refused with an unlock hint; damaged ones with a repair hint
Text-only PDFs are already lean, so rasterizing would make them bigger — in that case the tool returns your original unchanged ("already optimal — kept original") rather than a bloated copy, and text stays selectable
After converting, a before/after page viewer lets you slide between the original and the result and marks whether each page kept its selectable text

Engine: pdf.js re-renders each page at your chosen quality; our own PDF writer rebuilds the file from those JPEG pages. These statements describe the engine as shipped on 2026-10-02 — behaviour changes are recorded in the changelog. Measured data: What DPI really costs: rendering a PDF to images at 72 / 150 / 300.

About the formats

What is a PDF file?

PDF is the universal document format: it locks layout, fonts and images so a file looks identical on every device and printer. Scans, invoices, forms, e-books and reports all travel as PDF. Because a PDF is a container rather than an image, turning its pages into JPG or PNG pictures — or bundling pictures into a PDF — are among the most common file tasks there are.

Getting under the limit without a visible cost

Upload forms cap at 10 MB, inboxes bounce past 25, and scanned PDFs blow through both — because scans are page-sized images, and images are where the bytes live. Compression re-encodes those images at your chosen level: Recommended balances size and fidelity for everyday sharing, Extreme squeezes hardest for strict portals, Light barely touches quality for documents that must survive print.

Results depend on what the PDF is made of: image-heavy scans routinely shrink by half or far more, while born-digital text PDFs are already efficient and move less. The workflow that never disappoints — compress at Recommended, open the result, zoom to 200% on the busiest page; if it reads clean, send it. Compressing a compressed file compounds artifacts, so always return to the original for another pass.

Guides for this task

Frequently asked questions

Is this Compress PDF tool free?

Yes — completely free, with no sign-up, no watermarks and no daily quota. Processing happens in this browser, so the practical limit is the memory available on your device.

Can I process multiple PDF files at once?

Yes. Add as many files as you like — each one is processed in sequence with its own progress status, and you can download the results individually or all together as a ZIP archive.

Will the text still be selectable after compression?

No — this compressor rebuilds each page as an optimized image, which is what makes the big size reductions possible. The PDF stays perfectly readable and printable, but text can no longer be selected or searched. For documents where selectable text matters more than size, keep the original.