What it does
- Two modes: Light keeps your text, Strong gives the biggest saving
- Three quality levels in Strong mode
- Shows exactly how much smaller the file got
- Only offers the new file if it is really smaller
- Nothing is uploaded
How to use it
- Drop your PDF into the box, or click it to choose the file.
- Pick Light or Strong. With Strong, choose a quality level.
- Press Compress PDF and wait while it works. Big files can take a minute.
- Download the smaller file. If it did not shrink, try Strong mode or a lower quality.
How does PDF compression work, and what are its limits?
Most of the weight in a PDF is images. Light mode tidies the file's structure and strips extra information. That usually saves only a little but keeps everything as it was, including text you can select. Strong mode redraws every page as a picture at a lower quality. That can shrink a scanned document a lot, but the text becomes part of the picture, so you can no longer select or search it.
This is why the tool is honest about results. A PDF that is already well compressed, or one that is mostly text, may not get smaller at all. In that case you see a message instead of a download. Strong mode on a text-heavy PDF can even make it bigger, and the tool will not hand you a bigger file.
Which mode should I pick?
Light: contracts, reports and any PDF where you need to keep selectable text.
Strong: scanned documents, photo-heavy files and anything that has to fit under an upload limit, like 2 MB.