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How to Compress a PDF to a Smaller Size
Email limits, application portals that demand 'PDF under 200KB', slow uploads — oversized PDFs are a daily annoyance. Compression rebuilds the file's images at a smaller scale so the document gets dramatically lighter while staying perfectly readable. This guide shows both everyday compression and the more useful trick: compressing to an exact target size, which job and visa portals often require.
Step by step
- Open the Compress PDF tool and select your file — its current size is shown.
- For a general squeeze, leave the target empty and compress: images are re-encoded smaller.
- For an exact size, type the target in KB (for example 200) and compress — the tool works towards that size.
- Download the compressed PDF and check its new size before sending or uploading it.
Open the Compress PDF tool
Tips for better results
- Scanned PDFs compress the most, because their pages are large images. Text-based PDFs are already small and shrink less.
- If a portal says 'under 200KB', aim slightly below (around 190KB) so rounding never pushes you over.
- Compressing to very small targets reduces image sharpness — fine for forms and IDs, less ideal for photo portfolios.
Frequently asked questions
It depends on the content. A scan-heavy 10MB file can often drop below 1MB; a mostly-text file is already compact. Target-size mode tries to land as close to your KB figure as the content allows.
Text stays sharp because it remains text. Only embedded images and scanned pages are re-encoded, and at moderate settings the difference is hard to see.
No — compression happens in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server, so private documents stay on your device.