A smaller PDF,
without the blur
Photographs inside the document are re-encoded at the quality you pick. Text, fonts and diagrams are copied across untouched, so nothing goes soft that was not a photograph.
A smaller PDF,
Drop a PDF to reduce its size
Compressed on your device. Free, no signup, no watermark, no upload.
RE-ENCODES PHOTOGRAPHS · LEAVES TEXT ALONE
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Scanned documents and photo-heavy reports shrink the most. A PDF that is mostly text is already close to its smallest size.
Text, fonts and vector graphics are copied across untouched. Only photographs are re-encoded.
Where the size in a PDF actually is
Compressing a PDF well means knowing which part of it is large, and it is almost never the part people assume.
Text is tiny, photographs are not
A page of text is a few kilobytes: a list of characters and positions, plus a font that is shared across the whole document. A single photograph on that page can be three megabytes. This is why a fifty-page report can be smaller than a two-page scanned letter, and why compressing the text achieves nothing while compressing the images achieves almost everything.
What makes other compressors blur your text
Some tools reduce size by rendering each page to an image and rebuilding the document from those pictures. The file gets smaller and the text stops being text — no longer selectable, no longer searchable, and visibly soft at any zoom. This tool never does that. Only image objects are touched; everything else is copied byte for byte.
Scans compress the most
A scanned document is entirely photographs, often at 300 dots per inch when 150 would be indistinguishable on screen. Those are the files that fall by eighty or ninety per cent. A born-digital report with a few illustrations will shrink modestly. One that is pure text may not shrink at all, and the tool will say so rather than quietly returning the same file.
When a page would grow, it is left alone
Re-encoding an already heavily compressed image can make it larger. Each image is compared against its original and kept whichever way is smaller, so the output is never bigger than it needs to be, and the report tells you how many were skipped.
Common questions
Can I control the quality?
Yes. The image quality slider and the maximum image dimension are both yours to set. Lower quality makes a smaller file; the default of 70 per cent at 1600 pixels suits documents being emailed or read on screen.
Will the text become blurry?
No. Only photographs are re-encoded. Text, fonts and vector graphics are copied across untouched and stay selectable and searchable.
How much smaller will it get?
Scanned documents often drop by 80 to 90 per cent. Reports with a few images shrink modestly. A text-only PDF may not shrink at all, and the tool tells you when that is the case.
Is my document uploaded?
No. It is read and rebuilt in your browser. No request is made and it works offline.
Is there a file size limit?
Only your device's memory. There is no imposed cap, no watermark and no registration.
Does compressing remove the metadata?
The document is rebuilt, so the original author and timestamps do not carry into the new file. Use the file checker if you need that confirmed.
The other tools
All free, all in your browser, nothing uploaded.
Open
Check a file for hidden data
Privacy score out of 100, a plain-English list of what your file reveals — location, names, tracked changes, hidden sheets — and a verified clean copy. Photos, HEIC, PDFs, Office files and ZIP archives.
Check a file →OpenMerge PDF
Combine PDFs and images into one document. JPG, PNG and HEIC photographs become pages, reorder them as you like, and nothing is re-rendered or uploaded.
Merge PDF files →OpenEdit PDF
Add text, drop in an image or signature, then rotate, reorder or delete pages. Existing text stays selectable.
Edit a PDF →You are here
OpenCompress PDF
Reduce PDF file size without blurring the text. Images are re-encoded at a quality you choose; text and vector graphics stay untouched.
Split PDF
Extract any pages or ranges into a new document — type 1,4,7-12. Free, no signup, no watermark.
Split a PDF →OpenJPG to PDF
JPG, PNG and HEIC into a PDF. Photos are turned upright automatically, copied in without re-compression, and can be rotated by hand.
Convert JPG to PDF →OpenPDF to JPG
Recover the photographs embedded in a document at their original quality, exactly as they went in.
Extract images →OpenCompress images
Batch compress JPG, PNG, WebP and HEIC. Choose the quality and size, and see before and after on every file.
Compress images →OpenWCAG 2.2 checker
Check a page against WCAG 2.2 — contrast, labels, headings and the new 24-pixel target size rule — with the exact change needed for each failure.
Check a page →