Compress a PDF
Reduces a PDF by redrawing each page at a lower resolution. This works very well on scanned documents and photographs of pages, which is what most oversized PDFs are. Read the limitation below before using it on a text document.
Your file stays on your device. This tool runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded to our servers, and nothing is stored.
Read this before compressing a text document
PDF · up to 100 MB
How to compress a PDF
- Choose your PDF.
- Pick a preset, or set the resolution and quality yourself.
- Compress, then check the resulting size and the preview.
- If it is still too large, try a lower resolution and compress the original again.
Supported formats
PDF in, PDF out. Files up to 100 MB.
Important limitations
Worth knowing before you start, so nothing here comes as a surprise at the point you are submitting a form:
- Each page becomes an image. Text in the compressed PDF can no longer be selected, searched or copied. For a scanned document this changes nothing, because it was already an image — but do not use this on a PDF whose text you need to keep.
- Compressing a PDF that is mostly text can make it larger. When that happens the tool keeps your original file and says so rather than handing you a worse one.
- Password-protected PDFs cannot be opened. Remove the password in your PDF reader first.
- Digital signatures, form fields, links and bookmarks are not preserved.
How your files are handled
This tool does its work using your browser’s own image and document engine. Your file is read from your device into the page’s memory, processed there, and offered back to you as a download. It is never sent to Fyleit, never written to a server, and never stored anywhere we can reach.
You can verify that for yourself: load this page, disconnect from the internet, and the tool still works. That is also why there is no sign-up and no email field — we have nothing to attach an account to.
Common problems
My PDF got bigger instead of smaller.
It is a text-based PDF, where the original stores letters as instructions rather than pixels. Rasterising it adds data. The tool detects this and returns your original untouched.
The text is now blurry.
The resolution is too low for the size of the text. Try 150 DPI rather than 100, and raise the quality. There is a real trade-off here — below a certain size, small print stops being readable.
It is taking a long time.
Every page is rendered individually, so a long document takes a while, particularly on a phone. The progress indicator shows which page it is on. Leave the tab open and in the foreground.
I cannot select the text any more.
That is inherent to this method and cannot be avoided in a browser. If you need selectable text, compress the images before creating the PDF instead of compressing the finished PDF.