PDF Compress

About PDF Compress

PDFs grow for reasons you cannot see. Every time a file is edited and saved, some apps append the changes rather than rewriting the file, leaving older versions of pages inside. Export tools add metadata, unused resources and uncompressed object tables. This tool copies only the pages you actually see into a fresh document and saves it with compact object streams, which strips out that dead weight.

How much you save depends on how the PDF was made. Files exported from office apps, edited repeatedly or merged from several sources often shrink by 20 to 60 percent. PDFs that are mostly large photos or scans save less, because the images themselves are kept at their original quality — nothing is blurred or downsampled. If the PDF is already tightly optimised, the tool tells you so and lets you keep the original.

If you need a scanned document under a strict limit such as 200 KB or 500 KB for a form, a good approach is to compress each page image first with our Photo Resize to KB tool and then combine them with JPG to PDF. That gives you full control over the final size.

Text stays selectable, links keep working and pages stay in the same order, because the content streams are copied exactly. Form fields and digital signatures may not survive a rebuild, so keep the original for any signed or fillable document.

All processing uses the open-source pdf-lib library running in your browser. The PDF is never uploaded, which makes this safe for bank statements, ID copies and contracts.