Compress PDF
Shrink heavy PDFs so they actually fit in an email.
Shrink scans and image-heavy PDFs so they fit under email attachment limits. Pick a compression level, see the before/after size instantly, and download. Compression runs on your own device — a 50 MB scan never has to crawl up your upload bandwidth to a server.
How it works
- Choose or drop the heavy PDF.
- Pick a level — light, balanced, or strong.
- Check the new size and download.
Common questions
How much smaller will my PDF get?
Scanned and image-heavy PDFs typically shrink 50–90%. Already-optimized, text-only PDFs may not shrink much — the tool tells you honestly when that's the case.
Will the text still be selectable?
Pages are re-encoded as images for maximum size reduction, so text is no longer selectable. That trade-off is ideal for scans and email attachments; skip compression when you need selectable text.
Is there a file size limit?
Files up to 100 MB are supported — and because nothing uploads, big files are just as fast to start working on as small ones.
Can it get my PDF under a specific size, like 100 KB?
Often, yes - it depends on the content. Try Strong compression first; scanned and image-heavy PDFs shrink the most (often 50-90%). If it's still too large, the file may simply contain more image data than the target allows.
Does compression work well on scanned documents?
Scans are the best case: each page is an image, and images are exactly what compression shrinks. A scanned contract that's 10 MB will usually come out a small fraction of that.
🔒 Like every SwiftlyPDF tool, this runs 100% in your browser. No uploads, no account needed, no watermarks — ever.