Compress a PDF
Get a PDF under an email or portal size limit. Photos inside the file are resampled and re-encoded; text, vectors and fonts are left alone.
Drop a PDF file here
Free · no signup · no watermark · files stay on this device · how local processing works
How to use Compress PDF
- Open the PDFIts current size is shown in the file list.
- Pick a levelLight, Balanced (recommended), Strong, or Maximum for scans.
- CompressThe result shows the new size and percentage saved.
What gets smaller
Most PDF bulk is photographs and scans stored at higher resolution than a screen or office printer needs. Light keeps images up to 2600 px on the long side at high JPEG quality; Balanced caps them at 1800 px; Strong at 1200 px with heavier compression. The document structure is also re-packed into compressed object streams.
When to use Maximum
Maximum re-draws every page as a 110 dpi image. That can make large scanned or graphics-heavy files dramatically smaller, but text is no longer selectable or searchable. Run OCR PDF afterwards if you need search back.
When it can’t help
Text-only PDFs exported from a word processor are usually already compact. If the compressed copy would not be smaller, PaperCircuit keeps your original bytes and says so instead of handing you a bigger file.
Getting under an email limit
Many mail servers reject attachments above 10–25 MB. Start with Balanced; if the result is still too big, try Strong, which caps images at 1,200 px on the long side. Maximum is the last resort for picture-heavy files: it renders every page as an image at 110 dpi, which usually shrinks scans dramatically but makes text unselectable.
Need more than one step? The Workbench runs Compress PDF together with other operations on the same file in one go — for example merge → compress → protect.
Questions about Compress PDF
Will compressing make the text blurry?
No for Light, Balanced and Strong — only embedded photos are re-encoded. Maximum turns pages into images, which can soften small text.
Why did my file barely shrink?
It probably contains little image data, or images in formats (CMYK, masks, 16-bit) that are left untouched to avoid color shifts.
Is my document uploaded to compress it?
No. Decoding and re-encoding happen with your browser’s own image engine on this device.
Can I compress several PDFs at once?
Use the Workbench to chain Merge → Compress, or compress files one after another — each run takes seconds.