PDF guides
How to compress a PDF without losing too much quality
Is your PDF too big to send? We explain how to compress it in your browser and when it's worth doing.
Published on June 4, 2026
PDFs with many images or scanned pages can weigh several megabytes, which makes them hard to email or upload to forms with size limits. Compressing them reduces the weight while keeping reasonable legibility, and you can do it right in your browser.
When it's worth compressing
- When the PDF exceeds your email's attachment limit.
- To upload it to a portal or form that asks for light files.
- When it's a scanned document or full of photos (where it shrinks most).
Steps to compress your PDF
- Open the compress PDF tool and upload your file.
- Choose the level: maximum compression, balanced or high quality.
- Process and download the lighter PDF.
Compress PDF
Reduce the size of your PDF files.
Does it lose quality?
Compression seeks a balance between size and sharpness: in balanced mode the difference is usually imperceptible. If the PDF is text-only and already optimized it may not shrink; in that case we return the original unchanged.
Everything happens in your browser, so your document isn't uploaded to any server.