Compress PDF

Add your PDF and choose how. Shrink images, the default, makes the photos and scans inside the file lighter while text stays sharp and selectable. Optimize rewrites the file without losing anything. Reduce quality turns whole pages into lower-resolution images for the deepest cut on a scan. The tool shows the real before and after size. It is free, needs no signup, and nothing is uploaded.

It finds the pictures embedded in your PDF, scales down the oversized ones, and re-encodes them more efficiently, directly in your browser. Everything else in the file, the text, the vector lines, the layout, is untouched, so the pages look the same and the text stays selectable and searchable. Images it cannot re-encode safely, like ones used as masks or with spot printing inks, are left exactly as they were. A replacement is only kept when it is genuinely smaller.

No. There is no honest way to hit an exact target size, because how much a PDF shrinks depends entirely on what is inside it. The tool shows you the real result, and you can step through the Amount settings to get the file as small as you need.

It depends on the mode. Shrink images lowers the quality of the pictures inside the file by the amount you pick, and touches nothing else. Optimize is lossless, so the quality is unchanged. Reduce quality is lossy on purpose: it lowers the resolution of every page to shrink the file, so text stops being selectable and fine lines soften. You choose which one to use.

Because it is already compact. A PDF made of text and vector lines, like a construction plan or a document, stores its content very efficiently, so there is little for any compressor to remove, and that is normal. The big savings come when a file carries large photos or scanned pages: Shrink images makes those lighter while keeping the text, and Reduce quality cuts a pure scan the deepest.

With Shrink images and Optimize, yes: the text is untouched and stays selectable and searchable. With Reduce quality, no: each page becomes an image, so the text becomes part of the picture and can no longer be selected.

No. Your PDF is compressed on your own device and never sent to a server, so it is safe for confidential drawings and documents. That is different from most online compressors, which upload your file to their servers to process it.

A scan stores every page as a large photo, which is why it is big. Shrink images makes those photos lighter, and Reduce quality lowers the resolution of entire pages for the deepest cut. How much you save depends on the original resolution, so the tool shows you the real before and after rather than promising a number.

Those services upload your file to their servers to process it. This tool does the same kind of work, shrinking the images inside the PDF, entirely in your browser, so your file never leaves your device. It is also honest about the limits: a plan or document made of text and vector lines has little for any compressor to remove, and this tool tells you that instead of overpromising.

No. Compressing only changes the file size. To measure length, area, and count on a PDF to scale, use Easy Takeoffs, the construction takeoff software built to measure off plans. 14-day trial, no card.