Compress a PDF
Compress PDF on ilovspdfs shrinks a PDF on ilovspdfs servers: a lossless rebuild of the file's structure, or a pass that also downsamples the embedded images for a bigger saving. It reports the real before and after sizes. It is part of Pro; the file is sent over HTTPS, processed in memory, and never stored.
Pro tool. The file is sent over HTTPS, processed in memory, and never stored.
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.pdf · up to 4.0 MB
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About this tool
Two ways to shrink a file, and both are honest about the result. Lossless rebuilds the document's internal structure and recompresses its streams, which never changes what is on the page and usually saves a little. Smaller file goes further: the embedded images are downsampled and re-encoded, which is where scans and photo-heavy documents give up most of their size. Either way you see the exact before and after figures, and a file that was already compact comes back unchanged with that fact stated rather than dressed up as a saving.
How to compress a PDF
- 1Choose the PDF to shrink.
- 2Pick lossless, or trade some image quality for a smaller file.
- 3Download the result and see exactly how much it saved.
At a glance
| What it does | Shrink a PDF by rebuilding it, with optional image downsampling. |
|---|---|
| Where it runs | Sent over HTTPS, processed in memory, never stored |
| Accepts | |
| Files per job | One at a time |
| Maximum file size | 4 MB |
| Price | Part of Pro. Needs an account and a subscription; no watermark. |
| Status | Working |
Questions
- Is my file uploaded for this tool?
- Yes. Unlike the tools marked Private, this one sends your file to an ilovspdfs server over HTTPS, processes it in memory, and streams the result straight back as the response. Nothing is written to disk, nothing is logged about the contents, and nothing remains once the response has been sent.
- How much smaller will my PDF get?
- It depends entirely on what is in it. A scan or a document full of photographs can lose most of its size to image downsampling. A text-only PDF has little to give, and the tool will say so and hand back the original rather than a file that is a few bytes smaller.
- Does compression reduce quality?
- Lossless does not: text, vectors, and images are byte-for-byte what they were. Smaller file re-encodes images at a lower resolution and JPEG quality, so photographs soften slightly at high zoom. Text and line drawings are never rasterised.
- Why does this tool need a Pro subscription?
- Because it runs on hardware we pay for. Everything that runs in your own browser stays free with no account, at any file size. The cloud tools are the few jobs a browser tab genuinely cannot do, and Pro is what pays for the machines that do them.
Also called Reduce PDF file size, Shrink a PDF, Make a PDF smaller.