Compress PDFs online right from your browser

Get more with less - compress PDFs

1. Upload your file. To take advantage of our free online PDF compression, simply drag and drop your PDF file to upload it to our server.

2. Decide how much to compress. Choose between Basic, Medium, or Strong compression. For image-rich PDFs, we recommend choosing Basic or Medium compression settings to avoid significantly reducing the quality of your images.

3. Download your file. Once the compression is completed, click on "Download your file" and choose where you want to save it.

Reasons to compress with us

Dead-simple compression

You don't need to play with downsampling or other advanced settings to compress PDFs online properly.

Your work remains private

We automatically delete the uploaded file as soon as you download your compressed PDF, keeping your personal data out of harm's reach.

Compress from any device

As long as your device supports modern browsers, how to compress a PDF's file size will no longer be something to worry about.

FAQs

What is file compression?

PDF compression helps you minimize a PDF’s file size as much as possible without degrading its original quality. For instance, it is exceptionally useful when you need to share documents via email since you’re always guaranteed to meet the attachment limits.

How to compress a PDF to a specific size, for example compress a PDF to 100KB?

When compressing PDF with PDF Extra Desktop, the software allows you to preview the file size of the compressed file and adjust the level of compression until the file size is satisfactory. Previewing is also practical for checking the image quality as PDF compression of images may reduce it.

Does compressing a PDF reduce its quality?

The PDF Extra Desktop’s compressor balances an optimized file size against the expected quality of images and other file content. If you are not sure what level of compression to use to compress PDF files offline or online, leave it to the PDF compressor and use the default optimized settings.

When choosing this setting, PDF Extra will reduce the size of your PDF files, without compromising on quality. Generally, it’s best to avoid high compression amounts unless absolutely necessary since they could significantly affect the quality of your texts and images and even make them unusable in some extreme cases.

How to compress a PDF for emailing or sharing?

When sending files over email or sharing them with others, it’s essential to enable image compression so that the final result takes up as little space as possible. For your convenience, we suggest making several versions of your file with varying amounts of compression and then picking the file with the smallest size and the best quality.

How to compress multiple PDF files into one?

In order to compress multiple files, you first need to combine the PDFs. You can later compress the combined file to ensure that it will meet any email attachment requirements.

Will PDF compression delete the original files?

Even if you end up accidentally going overboard with the compression settings, you can rest assured that PDF Extra Desktop will keep your original file intact. This way, you can restart the process as many times as needed until you are fully satisfied with the end result.

Why use this over free online PDF compression tools?

There are plenty of online and offline tools that allow you to compress PDFs and make them easier to share in different ways. However, most of these free online compressors do not allow any level of compression customization, which means you don't have any control over the extent to which the file is reduced.

Keep in mind that security is equally important when working with online tools. With offline PDF compressors, such as PDF Extra, you work locally on your desktop and so security is not an issue. With PDF Extra's compression, you can also decide how much reduction you want to apply to the embedded images.