PDF Compress (Cloud)
Real server-side PDF compression — smaller files, same page count
Up to 200 MB. Files are deleted from the server within 30 minutes.
⚠️ Please don't close or refresh this page until it's done, or you may lose the result.
💡 Upload speed depends on your own network, not our servers — a slow connection just means the bar moves slower. It'll keep going; no need to retry or worry about being charged twice.
How it works
- 1
Drop in the PDF you want to shrink.
- 2
Pick a compression level — smallest file, balanced, or best quality.
- 3
Download the compressed PDF. Files auto-delete in 30 minutes.
What each level does internally
| Level | Images | Typical saving |
|---|---|---|
| Small | Downsample to 96 dpi, JPEG q60, strip metadata | 60–80% smaller |
| Balanced | 150 dpi floor, JPEG q75, cleaned structure trees | 40–60% |
| Quality | Lossless streams only, no resampling | 10–25% |
Text never degrades at any level — only images and redundant structures are touched. Already-optimized PDFs may barely shrink; that's reported honestly instead of padded with tricks that break printing.
Three compression levels, honest trade-offs
Small, Balanced or Quality — each level states exactly what it sacrifices before you spend credits, and the result's size shows immediately.
Three Compression Levels
Pick Small, Balanced or Quality — Ghostscript downsamples images and re-encodes content server-side, so you choose the trade-off between size and sharpness.
Real Recompression
A genuine Ghostscript pass on our server re-encodes the whole document, going far beyond what a browser-side pass can do — image-heavy PDFs shrink by a meaningful margin.
Same Pages, Same Text
The page count and the text stay intact while the file gets smaller — compressed output emails faster and fits attachment limits without losing a single page.
Frequently asked questions
How much smaller will my file get?⌄
It depends heavily on the PDF — files full of high-resolution images shrink the most (often 50-90%); PDFs that are mostly text were already small and shrink less.
Will it look different?⌄
"Smallest file" downsamples images the most aggressively; "Best quality" keeps images closer to original resolution while still re-encoding efficiently. "Balanced" is a good default for most documents.
Is my file kept on the server?⌄
No — the upload and the result are both deleted automatically within 30 minutes of the job finishing.
Related tools
What Is PDF Compression?
PDF compression shrinks a PDF's file size so it can be emailed, uploaded, or archived more easily. Large PDFs mostly come from high-resolution images: scanned pages, photos embedded in reports, and print-quality graphics can push a document past attachment limits in seconds. This tool runs a genuine Ghostscript recompression on our servers — downsampling images and re-encoding the document far more effectively than a browser-only pass — and lets you pick how aggressively to compress. It is a credit-metered tool: each run costs a small number of credits from your account balance. The page count and the order of your document never change, no matter which level you pick.
What this tool can do
- 🗜️ Choose from three compression levels: smallest size, balanced, or best quality
- 🖼️ Images inside the PDF are downsampled and re-encoded by real Ghostscript
- 📄 The page count and reading order stay exactly the same
- 📊 Compare the original and resulting file sizes before you download
- 🔁 Automatic credit refund if a job fails
When you'll use it
- 📧 Shrink a report to fit an email attachment limit
- 🖥️ Fit a large document onto a website or system with an upload cap
- 🗄️ Archive scanned documents at a reasonable size and quality
- 📱 Make a big manual readable and transferable on a phone
Your file is uploaded over an encrypted connection to our server, processed by Ghostscript, and automatically deleted afterward — jobs and their files expire on the server, so nothing is kept. Compression re-encodes images, so the most aggressive level trades a little sharpness for much smaller size, and text-based PDFs are already small and may not shrink much. Each run costs credits, refunded automatically if anything fails.