PDF Compressor

Compress PDF Online — Free, No Watermark

To compress a PDF, upload your file and choose a compression level. xconvert shrinks it on our servers with no watermark and no sign-up. Image-heavy and scanned PDFs shrink the most, because their size comes from embedded images that get downsampled to a lower resolution.

Real result: In our production data the median PDF drops about 76% — a 5 MB file becomes roughly 1.2 MB — with image-heavy scans compressing most.

How to Compress a PDF Online

1. Upload Your PDF: Drag and drop one or more PDFs onto the page, or click "+ Add Files" to browse. Batch compression is supported — every file uses the same preset.
2. Pick a Compression Type: Choose Screen (Best) for the smallest file (72 DPI images, suitable for email and web), Ebook for a balanced 150 DPI download, Default for a general-purpose result, Printer for 300 DPI office printing, or Prepress for 300 DPI with color preservation intact for commercial print workflows.
3. Tune Image Quality (Optional): The image quality slider defaults to 75 (out of 100). Drop it to 50-60 for aggressive size cuts on photo-heavy PDFs, or raise it to 85-90 if you need crisper screenshots and diagrams.
4. Compress and Download: Click Compress. Files process on our servers with TLS in transit, no watermark, and no sign-up. Each output keeps its original page count, bookmarks, and text layer.

Why Compress a PDF?

PDFs balloon when they carry scans, embedded photos, vector-heavy graphics, or unoptimized fonts. A 30-page scanned contract can easily exceed 50 MB at 300 DPI — too large for most email systems and slow to upload to portals. Compression rewrites the images at a lower resolution and re-encodes them with JPEG or Flate, leaving the text layer and vector elements untouched so the document stays searchable and selectable.

• Email attachments: Both Gmail and Outlook.com cap personal attachments at 25 MB; many corporate Exchange tenants enforce 20 MB or 10 MB. The Screen or Ebook preset gets most documents under that ceiling.
• Government and legal e-filing: PACER caps individual filings at 50 MB and many state court portals at 25 MB or 35 MB. Tax-authority uploads (HMRC, IRS, ATO) often limit individual attachments to 5-10 MB.
• Job applications and form uploads: Common App, USAJOBS, and many university portals reject PDFs over 5 MB; LinkedIn Easy Apply caps resumes at 5 MB.
• Web publishing and SEO: Smaller PDFs improve Largest Contentful Paint when linked inline and keep crawl budget lean on document-heavy sites.
• Cloud storage and backups: Compressed PDFs cut storage costs and shorten sync time on Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive — especially useful for scanned archives.
• Print shop submissions and mobile delivery: Many lab and print-on-demand portals cap uploads at 100 MB; shrinking to Printer preset (300 DPI) preserves print quality while halving size.

PDF Compression Preset Cheat Sheet

DPI values reflect the Ghostscript -dPDFSETTINGS profiles that drive most server-side PDF compressors. Mono (1-bit black-and-white) images are kept at high DPI in every preset because dropping below 300 DPI makes text in scans illegible.

How PDF Compression Actually Works

Compression on xconvert is performed server-side using a Ghostscript-style pipeline. Text and vector content stay lossless even at the Screen preset — only embedded raster images are downsampled and re-encoded.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I reduce PDF file size?

Upload the PDF and pick a compression level; xconvert downsamples the embedded images, which usually dominate PDF size, and re-encodes them at a lower resolution on our servers. Text-only PDFs are already small and barely change. Choose a balanced level to shrink images while keeping text crisp.

How much will my PDF actually shrink?

Image-heavy and scanned PDFs typically shrink 60-90% on the Screen preset and 40-70% on Ebook. Born-digital PDFs that are mostly text (contracts, reports exported from Word) compress less — usually 10-30% — because text and vectors are already encoded efficiently. If your PDF is already optimized, an extra pass may save only a few percent.

Will compression make my text blurry or unsearchable?

No. Text in a born-digital PDF is stored as font references and Unicode strings, not as pixels — compression leaves it untouched and fully selectable. Scanned PDFs are different: the page is one big image, so dropping the DPI below 200 can make small text fuzzy. For scans, prefer Ebook (150 DPI) over Screen (72 DPI), or run OCR first so the text layer is separate from the image.

Should I use Screen or Ebook for emailing a contract?

Use Ebook if the contract contains scanned signatures, exhibits, or photos and you want them legible when printed. Use Screen if the recipient will only view it on screen and you need to fit under a hard 10 MB cap. Most 25 MB email caps (Gmail, Outlook.com) are reached with Ebook for documents up to roughly 200 scanned pages.

Why didn't my PDF get any smaller?

Three common causes: (1) the PDF is already optimized — Adobe Acrobat, modern Word exports, and Apple Pages produce well-compressed output by default; (2) it contains mostly text and vectors, which have little room to shrink; (3) images are already at or below the preset's target DPI, so downsampling does nothing. Try the Screen preset and lower the image quality slider if you need a smaller result.

Is the output still PDF/A compliant for archiving?

Standard compression does not produce PDF/A, and aggressive image downsampling can break PDF/A-1 conformance because PDF/A-1 disallows JPEG 2000 and JBIG2. PDF/A-2 and PDF/A-3 (ISO 19005-2 / -3) do permit JPEG 2000 and JBIG2, but many archivists — including the US National Archives — discourage lossy image compression for records of permanent value. If you need archival output, compress first, then convert to PDF/A separately and validate with veraPDF.

Can I set a specific target file size, like under 5 MB?

Pick the Screen preset, run it, and check the result. If you are still over budget, drop the image quality slider to 50-60 and re-run. For most documents, Screen at quality 75 lands well under 5 MB; for very long scanned PDFs you may need to split first (Split PDF) or compress each section separately.

Will fillable form fields, hyperlinks, and bookmarks survive?

Yes. AcroForm fields, hyperlinks, bookmarks, page labels, and the document outline are stored as PDF objects, not images, so they pass through unchanged. Digital signatures, however, will be invalidated because compression rewrites the file — sign the PDF after compressing, not before.

Is there a file size or page count limit?

Free anonymous users can compress files up to xconvert's standard upload cap shown on the page. Very large scanned PDFs (500+ pages) may be faster to split with Split PDF, compress each chunk, and merge with Merge PDF. For PDFs that are large mainly because of a few high-resolution images, extracting and re-inserting via PDF to JPG and JPG to PDF is sometimes more efficient than a global recompress.

Is my file private?

Yes. Uploads are encrypted in transit with TLS, processed in an isolated session, and deleted automatically after the job completes. No account is required, no watermark is added, and the file is never indexed or shared.