# Compress PDF Compress a PDF to 1MB, 500KB or any target you name, or set the resolution yourself. Works on scans, screenshots and text documents. Nothing is uploaded. Canonical page: https://filetity.com/compress-pdf ## Capabilities - Free: Yes, with no watermark and no page limit. - Account required: No. There is no account system. - Processed on device: Yes. The file is read by your browser and never uploaded. There is no server to send it to. - Formats: PDF in, PDF out. One file at a time. - Limits: No page limit. A file that genuinely will not shrink is refused rather than handed back the same size, and it is told what it is made of. Images already stored as CCITT fax or JBIG2 are left alone because they are already tighter than anything this would replace them with. Very large scans are limited by the memory your device gives the browser. - Mobile: Yes, on any modern mobile browser. Large files are limited by the memory the phone gives the browser. - Offline: Yes, after you have used it once. Your browser keeps what the tool needs, so it then works with no network connection. ## Questions ### My PDF has no pictures in it. Is there anything to compress? Usually yes, and this page used to say no. A PDF written by a word processor often stores its page content with no compression at all, and a document assembled by merging several files carries the same embedded font once per source file. Measured on 2026-09-03 against a 55-page text-only PDF exported by LibreOffice: 714 KB down to 257 KB, 64% smaller, with no page, no character and no image altered. If a file genuinely has nothing left to give it is refused and told what it is actually made of, rather than handed back the same size. ### How do I compress a PDF to under 1MB, or to 500KB? Switch to "To a size", pick the target, and press the button. It cannot be worked out in advance: the same settings produce wildly different sizes on a photographic scan and on a text document, so the only honest way to hit a number is to try, measure and try again. This lowers the resolution before it lowers the quality, because most scans carry pixels the page never uses and removing those costs you nothing visible, and it keeps searching for the best settings that fit rather than stopping at the first ones that do. If your target is out of reach it says so and tells you the smallest it managed, instead of handing back a file that the upload box will still reject. ### Why is resolution a bigger lever than quality? Because most scans carry pixels nobody will ever see. A phone or a scanner embeds a photograph at 300 or 450 dpi and the page then draws it into a box sized for reading, so two thirds of those pixels are paying rent and doing nothing. No quality setting finds them: it makes every pixel worse instead of removing the ones that are surplus. Measured on a page image stored at 1600 by 1200 and drawn across 539 points, which is 214 dpi: at 150 dpi it needs 1122 by 841, which is 51% fewer pixels before quality is touched at all. Choose "leave every image at its own size" if you are keeping the file for print. ### How much smaller will my PDF get? It depends entirely on the file, which is why the page shows you the real result before you download it. A 938 KB scan of two photo pages came out at 354 KB, 62% smaller, at the default quality (measured in Chrome, 2026-08-26). A PDF that is mostly text will barely move, and you will be told so. ### Will the text go blurry? No. Text stays text and vector drawing is copied across untouched, so both stay sharp at any zoom. The fonts are made smaller, by removing tables a reader never needs and the outlines for characters your document does not contain, but every character you can see keeps its own outline and its own place in the font. Only the embedded photos and scans are re-encoded, and the level you pick decides how hard. ### Can it compress a password-protected PDF? No. It refuses an encrypted file rather than producing a damaged one. Remove the password first, then compress. ## Related tools - [Merge PDF](https://filetity.com/merge-pdf): Combine several PDFs into a single file, in page order you choose. - [Split PDF](https://filetity.com/split-pdf): Break a PDF into separate files, or pull the pages you need out of it. - [PDF to JPG](https://filetity.com/pdf-to-jpg): Turn each page of a PDF into a JPG image at the resolution you pick.