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How to Compress a PDF Without Losing Quality

Large PDFs are a pain — they bounce back from email, take ages to upload and eat storage. The good news is you can shrink most PDFs a lot without a noticeable drop in quality. Here is how to compress a PDF for free, right in your browser.

Try the Compress PDF tool →

What makes a PDF large?

Scanned pages and high-resolution images are usually the culprits. Text takes up very little space, so PDFs that are mostly text are already small. Image-heavy PDFs are where compression saves the most.

Step-by-step: compress a PDF

1. Open the Compress PDF tool and add your file.
2. Choose the recommended level for the best balance of size and quality.
3. Click Compress and wait a moment.
4. Preview the result and download your smaller PDF.

Keep quality high

Start with the recommended level — it usually cuts size sharply while keeping pages crisp. Only move to the high setting if you must hit a strict size limit. If the file is still large, check whether you can remove unneeded pages first with Remove Pages.