About this tool
Big PDFs are almost always big because of the pictures inside them: phone photos dropped into a report, or a scanner saving every page as a huge image. The recommended method finds those embedded photos, re-encodes them at a sensible quality and size, and leaves everything else untouched, so text stays crisp and selectable while the file shrinks, often by 60-90%.
For scans and other image-only PDFs, flattening every page to a modest-resolution image gives the smallest possible file at the cost of selectable text. The lossless rewrite tidies the file structure without changing any content and is safe for anything, but usually saves only a few percent.
How to use it
- Drop your PDF files into the box above, or click to browse. Nothing is uploaded.
- Adjust the options if you want; the defaults suit most files.
- Click the button and wait a moment.
- Download the results individually or all at once as a ZIP.
Questions
Why did my PDF barely shrink?
If the file contains mostly text and vector graphics it is already small, and there are no photos to recompress. Flattening will not help either; the file is simply as small as it gets.
Will the text still be searchable?
With the recommended and lossless methods, yes. Flattening turns each page into a picture, so text can no longer be selected or searched.
How do I get a PDF under an email or upload limit?
Start with the recommended method at quality 60 and a 1200 px image size. If it is still too large and the document is a scan, use flattening at 100 DPI.
Do password-protected PDFs work?
Not yet. Remove the password in your PDF viewer first, then use the tool.
Is there a page limit?
No. Very large documents simply take longer, since everything is processed on your device.
Is it free, are files uploaded, which browsers work: the general questions are answered once for the whole site.