How to reduce PDF file size online

Upload forms often cap files at 1 MB, 2 MB or 5 MB. This guide covers the quickest ways to get a PDF under a limit, starting with the simplest.

Go straight to the PDF compressor if you already know what to do.

Step-by-step

1
Compress the file
Run the PDF through the compress tool and check the reported size. For many documents this alone is enough.
2
Remove pages you do not need
Use the split tool to keep only the pages the recipient asked for. Fewer pages means a smaller file.
3
Shrink oversized images first
If the PDF was built from photographs, resize those images and rebuild the PDF; a 12-megapixel photo per page is usually far more than required.
4
Re-check and send
Confirm the final size against the limit before uploading.

Phone scans at full resolution produce very large PDFs. The scan tool's grayscale option produces much lighter pages.

Repeatedly compressing the same file degrades quality without much further saving.

All of these steps run in your browser, so a confidential document is not uploaded anywhere.