Free PDF tool
Compress PDF
Get under the upload limit, and know exactly what you traded away.
Almost every PDF compressor hides what it actually does. There are really only two levers: rewrite the file structure without touching the pages, which is safe but rarely saves much; or re-render the pages as images, which can cut a scan by 90% but destroys the text layer.
This tool exposes both, tells you which one you're using, and shows the before-and-after size. Scanned documents shrink dramatically because they were images to begin with. A text-heavy report will barely move under lossless mode — and that is the honest answer, not a failure.
How to use it
- 01Drop in the PDF you want to make smaller.
- 02Choose Strong to re-render pages as images, or Lossless to keep the text layer intact.
- 03Adjust resolution and quality if you want finer control, and try greyscale for scans.
- 04Compress, compare the sizes shown, and download.
Frequently asked questions
Why did my PDF barely get smaller?
Lossless mode only removes structural waste, and a well-built text PDF has little to remove. If the file is mostly text, it is already close to as small as a PDF can be — switch to Strong mode only if you can live without selectable text.
Will the text still be searchable afterwards?
Under Lossless, yes. Under Strong, no: every page becomes a JPEG, so text can no longer be selected, searched or copied. The tool warns you before you run it.
What resolution should I pick?
150 DPI is a good default for something that will be read on screen and occasionally printed. Drop to 110 or 80 DPI for screen-only documents; go to 200+ DPI if the result needs to print cleanly.
Is this as good as a desktop tool?
For scans and image-heavy documents, the savings are comparable. What it cannot do is re-compress individual embedded images while preserving vector text — that requires deeper PDF surgery than runs comfortably in a browser.
Related tools
- PDF to JPG / PNGTurn pages into image files at whatever resolution you need.
- Resize & Crop PDFChange the page size, scale the contents, or trim the margins.
- Merge PDFCombine several PDFs into a single document, in the order you choose.
- Storage Unit ConverterConvert between bytes, KB, MB, GB and TB — decimal and binary, side by side.
This is what Purgify automates.
Connect your cloud accounts and Purgify finds duplicates and reclaimable space like this — across all of them, on a schedule.
Want early access? Write to us at [email protected]