Optimize · PDF tools
Compress PDF — Free Online Tool
Shrink PDF files by up to 90% while keeping text crisp.
About Compress PDF
PDF compression is one of the most-requested file operations on the web because PDF documents accumulate weight quickly. A 10-page scanned contract often weighs in at 25 MB, a marketing brochure with high-resolution photos can pass 100 MB, and a multi-chapter report with embedded charts is easily 50 MB. Our compressor uses Ghostscript — the same engine used by professional publishing houses and most PDF SaaS products you have heard of — to downsample embedded images, deduplicate resources, and strip uncompressed metadata blocks. Text remains crisp and selectable, vector graphics stay sharp at any zoom, and hyperlinks plus bookmarks survive intact. Four built-in quality presets (screen, ebook, printer, prepress) cover the full range from web-thin PDFs you can email easily to print-ready files that hold up under a magnifying glass. Unlike browser-side compressors that downsample everything to JPEG and call it done, our pipeline preserves vector layers and only re-encodes raster content where doing so yields a real saving. The result is consistently smaller files than Adobe Acrobat's Reduce File Size feature, with no software installation required.
How it works
Drop your PDF into the upload area or click to browse from disk.
Pick a quality preset — screen for email-friendly, ebook for general use, printer for print-ready.
Click Compress. Ghostscript runs server-side and streams the result back.
Download the smaller PDF. Original is deleted automatically within two hours.
Why use our compress pdf
- Four quality presets: screen, ebook, printer, prepress
- Ghostscript-powered downsampling — same engine as Adobe Acrobat Reader
- Vector graphics stay vector; only raster images are re-encoded
- Hyperlinks, bookmarks, form fields, and digital signatures preserved
- Batch processing on Pro plans
- No watermarks, no signup, no software install
Backed by Ghostscript — the industry-standard PDF processing toolchain used by print shops, publishers, and most PDF SaaS products.
Common use cases
- •Send scanned contracts under Gmail's 25 MB attachment cap
- •Compress catalogs and brochures for faster website loading and better Core Web Vitals scores
- •Reduce scanned textbook PDFs to fit on cloud-storage free tiers
- •Optimize PDFs before bulk-uploading to learning management systems
- •Trim file sizes ahead of digital-signing platforms with per-file limits
- •Archive long-term records under document retention quotas
File size limits and privacy
Up to 200 MB on the free tier, 2 GB on Pro, 10 GB on Business. Input: PDF. Output: PDF.
All files are sandboxed in temporary directories, scanned by ClamAV before processing, and auto-deleted within two hours. The download card includes a Delete File Now button for immediate purge. Read the full security and privacy documentation →
Frequently asked questions
How much smaller will my PDF get?
Typical savings are 50-90% for image-heavy documents (scanned contracts, catalogs, photo-rich reports) and 10-30% for text-mostly PDFs. The exact ratio depends on whether the original was already optimized.
Will text quality suffer?
No. Text is stored as vector outlines or as character codes referencing embedded fonts — neither is downsampled by image compression. Only raster images go through the re-encoding pass.
Are hyperlinks, bookmarks, and form fields preserved?
Yes. Our compression pipeline only optimizes embedded images and removes duplicate resource objects. Interactive elements — links, bookmarks, form fields, digital signatures, and tagged structure for accessibility — remain fully intact.
What is the file size limit?
Free users compress files up to 200 MB. Pro users (Pro $9.99/mo) get 2 GB and Business users (Business $24.99/mo) get 10 GB per file.
Can I batch-compress multiple PDFs?
Yes — Pro and Business users can queue up to 20 PDFs at once and download them as a single zip.
Is this better than compressing PDFs in Adobe Acrobat?
For most files the output is the same or smaller. Our server-side Ghostscript build runs multi-pass optimization that desktop Acrobat skips by default, and we process at higher priority than the free Acrobat Online tier.
Do you upload my file anywhere I can't delete it from?
No. Files live in a sandboxed temp directory, scanned by ClamAV, and a janitor job purges anything older than two hours. You can also press Delete File Now on the download card to wipe it immediately.
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Ready to compress pdf?
Launch the interactive tool — no signup, no install, no watermark on the output.
Open the Compress PDF tool →