How to reduce PDF file size (and get under upload limits)
Online forms for jobs, universities, visas and government services often limit uploads to 1 MB, 500 KB or even 200 KB. Email services stop at around 20–25 MB. A scanned 10-page document can easily be 15 MB, so knowing how to shrink a PDF saves a lot of frustration.
Try it now: free Compress PDF, no upload, no sign-up.
Open Compress PDF →Step by step
- Open Compress PDF.
- Choose your PDF. It's processed on your device, so confidential documents are not uploaded anywhere.
- Start with the recommended level. Check the size shown in the result.
- Still too big? Run it again with a stronger level, which lowers image quality further.
- Download the smaller file and open it once to check the text is still readable.
Why are some PDFs so large?
A PDF made from Word is mostly text and is usually tiny. A scanned PDF or one made from phone photos is really a stack of high-resolution images. Each page can be 1–3 MB. Compression works by re-saving those images at a resolution and quality suitable for screens and normal printing, which is where almost all the savings come from.
More ways to make a PDF smaller
- Remove pages you don't need with Remove PDF Pages, such as blank backs of scanned sheets.
- Split a long document into parts with Split PDF if the form accepts several files.
- Compress the photos before building the PDF: use Compress Image to KB, then JPG to PDF.
- Scan in grayscale at 150–200 DPI for text documents; colour 300 DPI scans are much larger than needed.
Will compression damage my document?
Text, signatures and stamps remain sharp at the recommended level. At the strongest level, small print in photos may get soft, so always open the result and zoom in before submitting an important application.
Try it now: free Compress PDF, no upload, no sign-up.
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