Compress PDF
Make a PDF smaller without turning it into pictures. Your files never leave your device.
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PDF — images are recompressed, text is left alone
Most PDF compressors quietly ruin the document
The easy way to shrink a PDF is to render every page to an image and rebuild the file from those pictures. It reports an impressive saving. It also destroys the document: the text is no longer text, so it cannot be selected, searched, copied, or read by a screen reader, and it will never come back.
On a contract, an invoice or a CV that is a downgrade disguised as a feature. This tool takes the harder route — it finds the embedded images, which is where the bytes actually are in a scanned or photo-heavy PDF, and recompresses only those.
What that means for your file
A scanned document or a photo-heavy report can shrink substantially. A text-only PDF will barely move, because text and vector graphics are already compressed — and rather than reporting a fake saving, the tool says so. If nothing can be gained, nothing is downloaded.
Need to reorganise first? Use Organize PDF to merge, split, rotate or number pages, then compress the result.
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Frequently asked questions
- Will my text still be selectable and searchable?
- Yes, and that is the main difference here. Many online compressors rasterise every page — they turn the document into pictures, which reports a big saving but destroys selectable text, search, copy-paste and accessibility. This tool recompresses only the embedded images and leaves text and vector graphics exactly as they were.
- Why did my PDF barely get smaller?
- Because it is mostly text. Text and vector graphics are already compressed inside a PDF, so there is very little left to remove. The big savings come from scanned pages and photos. The tool tells you what it found rather than pretending.
- Is my file uploaded?
- No. Your files never leave your device The document is opened, recompressed and rebuilt entirely in your browser — which matters, because the files people compress are usually contracts, statements and applications.
- What if compressing makes the file bigger?
- Then nothing is downloaded and you are told. Re-encoding an already-optimised image usually grows it, so each image is only replaced when the new version is genuinely smaller — and if the whole document does not shrink, the tool says to keep your original.
- Which images are recompressed?
- JPEG images, which is what scanners and phone cameras embed. Other formats such as JPEG 2000 or CCITT fax are deliberately left untouched, because rebuilding them risks shifting colours — a corrupted document is worse than a large one.
- Can I compress after merging or rotating pages?
- Yes. Use Organize PDF first to merge, split, reorder or rotate, then compress the result here.