Compress PDF
Reduce a PDF’s size locally in your browser. Safe cleanup is non-destructive — it strips metadata and re-saves, keeping text selectable and pages sharp (so the reduction may be small or none). Image compression is an opt-in destructive mode for scanned or image-heavy PDFs: it rebuilds pages as compressed images, which can shrink them a lot but removes selectable text. Nothing is uploaded.
Your files stay on your device. Processing happens locally in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
How it works
- Select your PDF — drag it into the drop zone or click to browse.
- Choose a mode: Safe cleanup keeps text selectable; Image compression shrinks scans harder.
- For Image compression, pick a quality preset and check the first-page preview.
- Run the compression and download the smaller file — or keep your original if it can’t be shrunk.
Why local processing?
Compress PDF processes your file inside your browser, on your own device. Your document is not uploaded to our servers. The browser may download code needed to run the tool, but those requests do not contain your file.
Check it yourself: open your browser’s network tab while a file is being processed — your document never appears in any request.
Frequently asked questions
- Is my PDF uploaded somewhere to be compressed?
- No. Both modes run locally in your browser: Safe cleanup re-saves the file with pdf-lib, and Image compression redraws pages with pdf.js — all on your own device. Open the network tab in your browser’s developer tools while compressing and you will see no file transfer.
- How large can the file be?
- Each file can be up to 200 MB. Processing happens in your browser and also depends on available memory. Large or complex files may be slow or exceed your device’s resources even below this limit.
- Can I use this for documents that fall under the GDPR?
- The file is processed entirely on your device and never transmitted, so there is no server-side handling of personal data to assess — no storage, no retention, no third-party processor.
- Which mode should I pick?
- Use Safe cleanup when the text must stay selectable: it strips metadata and re-saves without touching page content, so the reduction can be small or zero. Use Image compression for scanned or image-heavy PDFs where shrinking the file matters more than selectable text.
- Does compression remove selectable text?
- Safe cleanup never does. Image compression does: it rebuilds each page as a flat picture, so text is no longer selectable or searchable, and links, forms, and bookmarks are removed. The tool warns you before you apply it to a text-based PDF.
- Can I compress to an exact target size?
- No. The presets are image-quality levels, not a target file size. Pick a preset, check the resulting size, and try a stronger level if you need the file smaller.
- What happens if the result isn’t smaller?
- You get your original file back unchanged. The tool never returns a larger file than the one you loaded.
Related tools
- Merge PDF — Combine multiple PDFs into one, in the order you choose.
- Remove PDF Metadata — Strip author, title, and other document metadata from a PDF.
- Split PDF — Pick pages or ranges and export them as a new PDF.