Compress PDF

Compress PDF reduces file size by rasterizing each page to a JPEG image and rebuilding a new PDF. This approach works best on scanned documents, photo albums saved as PDF, and fax-style PDFs where pages are already images.

It is the wrong tool for text-native PDFs with selectable text and vector graphics — those may become larger or unreadably blurry. Use it when you scanned 50 pages at 600 DPI and need a smaller email attachment, not when compressing a 10-page Word-exported PDF.

Input: PDF files. Output: a new smaller PDF. Controls: JPEG quality (0.1–1.0) and max DPI (72–200, default 120). Lower values shrink files more but reduce sharpness.

Each page becomes one full-page image inside the PDF — text is no longer selectable after compression.

Step 1: Confirm your PDF is scan/image-based — open it and try to select text; if you cannot, compression is appropriate.

Step 2: Upload the PDF.

Step 3: Start with default quality 0.6 and DPI 120; lower both if you need stronger compression.

Step 4: Click Convert — multi-page scans take time.

Step 5: Download and compare file size. Open and zoom to 100% to verify text remains readable.

Text-native PDFs (exported from Word, InDesign) should not use this tool — file size may increase and text becomes blurry images. Fine print, hairlines, and CAD drawings lose detail.

Not a replacement for professional PDF optimizers (Adobe Preflight, Ghostscript). Password PDFs fail. OCR text layers are destroyed — you lose searchability.

Government portals: meet 5 MB upload caps on scanned forms.

Email: send large scan PDFs without bouncing.

Storage: archive image-heavy PDFs at smaller size.

Document Converter never uploads your file for conversion. Processing uses JavaScript in your browser tab — the same security boundary as editing a document offline. Closing the tab clears the in-memory copy unless you saved the output.

We may load analytics or ads when you visit the site, but those requests do not include your document bytes. For HR records, medical forms, or unreleased designs, local conversion avoids the third-party upload step that cloud converters require.

Cloud tools like Smallpdf and iLovePDF receive your file via HTTP upload, process it on their servers, and return a download link. That model is convenient for public PDFs but adds privacy and compliance risk for sensitive content.

Document Converter runs pdf-lib, PDF.js, Mammoth, SheetJS, or Tesseract.js directly in your browser. Open DevTools → Network while converting: you should see no POST containing your file. You trade server-side CPU for device-side privacy — often the right choice for personal and workplace documents.