Compress PDF
Shrink your PDF file size without visible quality loss.
or click to browse — supports PDF files up to 25MB
Processed successfully. Download below.
How to use
- 1 Drop or click to upload your file
- 2 Adjust options if shown
- 3 Click Compress PDF
- 4 Download your result instantly
- ✓ Files up to 1 GB
- ✓ Unlimited jobs/hour
- ✓ Batch processing (up to 100 files)
- ✓ Priority support
Files are processed securely and deleted within 1 hour. Files are processed automatically. No human reviews your documents, and PDFRun does not use them to train models.
Why this works
Shrink a PDF so it slips under your email provider's attachment cap, fits an upload form, or stops bloating your Drive. Your file is processed over an encrypted connection and auto-deleted within 1 hour.
PDFs balloon for predictable reasons: high-resolution scans, full-colour images embedded at print quality, fonts subsetted multiple times across merged documents. Most of that weight is invisible to the reader. On a scanned document the images are usually the whole story, and they only need to be legible rather than magazine-printable — which is why scans compress far harder than their page count suggests.
We expose three compression levels. Recommended is the right choice for almost every document: images re-encoded more efficiently, fonts subsetted, embedded JavaScript stripped. Maximum compression drops image quality further (visibly so on photographs, though text stays crisp) and is the right choice when you're hitting a hard cap — Gmail's 25 MB attachment limit, an HR portal's 5 MB resume cap, a court e-filing system's 10 MB ceiling. Low compression keeps image quality close to the original — pick it when the PDF will be printed or when the recipient is going to zoom into figures.
If your PDF is a scanned document — phone-camera shots of a contract, a scanner dump from your office multifunction — the biggest single win is usually OCR + compression run together. Use the OCR tool first to make the document searchable, then compress: the text layer adds almost nothing to the file size but transforms what the recipient can do with the document.
Files are processed on our servers (powered by Stirling-PDF) over an encrypted connection and removed within 1 hour. No watermark is applied. No account is required. Compression is free for files up to the size cap on your current plan — most visitors never hit it.
How it works
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1Upload your PDFDrop your file into the upload box above or click to browse. We accept any standard PDF — scanned, born-digital, or one you exported from Word.
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2Pick a compression levelRecommended is the right default. Use Maximum if you need to hit a hard size cap (like Gmail's 25 MB limit). Use Low if the document will be printed.
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3Run the compressionPress Compress. Most everyday documents finish in well under a minute; large scans take longer.
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4Download the smaller fileYou'll see the original size, the new size, and the percentage saved. Click Download to save it. Files are auto-deleted from our servers within 1 hour.
Real-world uses
Job seekers
Resume + portfolio combined exceeds the careers-page upload cap (often 5 MB). Compress before uploading.
Sales reps
Customer decks with high-res screenshots and product photos balloon past 50 MB. Recommended compression preserves the look at a fraction of the size.
Mortgage applicants
Lenders typically cap each supporting document at 10 MB. Bank statements scanned in colour blow past this — compression solves it.
Law firms
Court e-filing portals impose hard size limits (often 10 MB per filing). Maximum compression keeps you under the cap without splitting the document.
Common questions
How small can you compress a PDF?
In practice, a colour scan typically drops 60–80%. A born-digital PDF (Word export, Pages export) drops 20–40% — the source was already efficient. There's a floor: the text, fonts and document structure each have a minimum encoded size, so a 30-page text-only PDF won't go below roughly 200 KB no matter the compression level.
Will compression hurt the quality?
At the Recommended level, almost never visibly — images are re-encoded more efficiently and redundant data is stripped, while the text layer is left alone and stays selectable. Maximum compression trades more image detail for a smaller file: text stays crisp, but you may see softening if you zoom into a photograph. Low keeps near-original quality. If a specific target size matters more than fidelity, pick one from the target-size list and the compressor will work towards it.
Why is my PDF too big for Gmail?
Gmail allows attachments up to 25 MB. Above that it auto-converts the file to a Google Drive link, which some recipients (corporate firewalls, mailing lists) reject. The Recommended setting gets most documents below 25 MB; where it does not, Maximum compression usually does. If neither clears it, the document holds more high-resolution image data than the cap allows — split it, or re-scan the source at a lower resolution.
Are my files private?
Uploads travel over HTTPS. Files are processed on our servers and removed within 1 hour. Files are processed automatically. No human reviews your documents, and PDFRun does not use them to train models.
Do you add a watermark?
No. PDFRun never adds a watermark on the free tier, unlike some competitors that watermark output after a daily quota or below a paid plan.
Can I compress multiple PDFs at once?
Yes — drag in multiple files, or upload a ZIP of PDFs. The output comes back as a ZIP with the same filenames, each compressed individually. Pro plans have higher batch limits.
What's the largest file I can upload?
Free accounts upload up to 25 MB per file. Pro lifts this to 1 GB. The maximum is also displayed in the badge at the top of the page.