How to compress a PDF
- Add your PDF. Drag it onto the box above or tap to pick it from your device.
- Choose a method. Keep text sharp is best for most documents. Choose Maximum compression for scanned pages or photos saved as PDF when size matters more than selectable text.
- Choose a level. Recommended balances quality and size. Use Light when image quality matters, or Strong when you need the smallest possible file.
- Press Compress PDF and watch the progress bar. Large scans can take a few seconds per page on older phones.
- Compare and download. The before and after sizes and the percentage saved are shown. Download your smaller PDF, or start over with different settings.
Features
- Two compression methods. Keep text selectable, or convert pages to images for maximum savings on scans.
- Three quality levels, so you can trade a little image sharpness for a lot of file size.
- Before and after file size, with the exact percentage saved.
- Safe by design. Images the tool can't safely re-encode are left untouched, and if compression wouldn't make the file smaller, you keep the original.
- Works with scanned documents, photo-heavy reports, brochures, e-books and phone scans.
- No file size limit other than your device's memory, no daily limit and no watermark.
Why use Fileora's PDF compressor
The most common reason to compress a PDF is a limit someone else set: an email attachment cap, a 2MB university upload, a government portal that rejects anything over 500KB. Those files are often the most sensitive ones you have, such as identity documents, payslips and signed forms.
Most PDF compressors handle that by uploading your document to their server. Fileora compresses the PDF inside your browser instead, so the document never leaves your device. You get the privacy of desktop software without installing anything, and it works the same on a phone as on a laptop.
The default method is deliberately careful. It shrinks only the images inside the PDF and leaves text and vector graphics alone, so the result still looks crisp when printed and can still be searched. When you really do need the smallest file, Maximum compression is one click away, with a clear explanation of what you give up.
Need to combine several documents first? Merge your PDFs and then compress the result. If your pages start life as photos, compressing the images before turning them into a PDF gives the best results.
What makes a PDF large?
Almost all of a large PDF's size comes from images: scanned pages, photographs and high-resolution graphics. A 20-page text document might be 200KB, while the same 20 pages scanned on a phone can easily reach 30MB, because every page is stored as a detailed photo. That is why compressing the images inside, or re-rendering scanned pages at a sensible resolution, reduces size so dramatically, and why text-only PDFs barely shrink.