Compress a PDF
Shrink scans and image-heavy PDFs by up to 90% — privately, without uploading them.
Compression re-renders image-heavy pages as JPEG images. With “Keep text selectable” on, pages made of text and vector graphics are only re-saved and stay searchable; pages that are mostly pictures are flattened.
Drop your PDF files here or click to browse
Stays on your device — nothing is uploaded
Select several files to process them together
How do I compress a PDF for free?
Open PDFkitt's Compress PDF tool (pdfkitt.com/compress-pdf/): choose the PDF, pick a level, compress, then download. It is free, needs no account and adds no watermark, and it runs entirely in your browser — the file is never uploaded to a server.
- Price
- Free — no trial, no paid tier, no watermark
- Account
- Not needed
- File upload
- None — processed on your device, in the browser
- Input
- PDF files (several at once)
- Limits
- No daily quota and no file-count limit
- Works on
- Windows, macOS, Linux, iPhone, iPad and Android, in any modern browser
Updated · by the PDFkitt team
Email limits, upload caps and slow connections all have the same fix: a smaller PDF. PDFkitt compresses PDFs in your browser by re-encoding the pictures that make them large — scans, photos and screenshots — at a resolution suited to reading on screen. Text pages can be kept exactly as they are, so they stay sharp and searchable.
Choose Light, Recommended or Strong, drop one or many files, and compare the before/after sizes in the results. Nothing is uploaded: a 200 MB scan is compressed as privately as a one-page letter.
How to compress a PDF
- Choose the PDF One or many.
- Pick a level Recommended is right for most files.
- Compress Pages are re-encoded on your device; a progress bar shows each one.
- Download See the size saved next to each file.
Why use PDFkitt to compress PDF?
The file is processed inside your browser tab. Disconnect from the internet after the page loads and it still works.
No signup, no email, no daily quota, no page limit, no watermark. Use it as often as you like.
Phone, tablet or desktop, in Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox. Nothing to install.
Frequently asked questions
How much smaller will it get?
Scans and photo-heavy files typically shrink 60–90%. Text-only PDFs are already small and may not shrink at all.
Will the text still be selectable?
With “Keep text selectable” on, text pages are untouched. Pages that are mostly images become pictures.
Is my PDF uploaded to compress it?
No. Pages are re-encoded inside your browser; the file never leaves your device.