Compress a PDF for free

Reduce the size of a PDF

A PDF that is too heavy gets refused by an email service, an online form or an administration's website. Compress it here to get a lighter file that still reads well, on screen and on paper.

The compressor works on what makes most PDFs heavy: the images inside them, photos and scans. It recompresses them and brings them down to a sensible resolution, while the text and the vector graphics are left exactly as they are.

If a PDF is still too big to send by email, share it with a link instead: see how to send large files with Drime.

How to compress a PDF in 3 steps

Open your PDF. Drop it on the page or choose it from your device. A PDF can weigh up to 200 MB on a computer with Chrome or Edge, and 100 MB in other browsers and on most phones, with any number of pages.

Choose how much to compress. Keep the Recommended level, choose a lighter or a stronger one, or enter a target size in KB or MB.

Download the result. You see the size before and after and the percentage saved, then download the compressed PDF. The original stays as it is on your device.

Choose the compression level

Three levels let you choose between size and image quality. Light keeps the images closest to the original, and the print colors (CMYK) of a print PDF, for documents you will print. Recommended gives a much lighter file that still looks sharp on screen, and suits most PDFs. Strong makes the smallest file, with images at a lower resolution, for a PDF you only need to read. Recommended and Strong convert colors to screen colors (RGB).

In our tests on real PDFs full of photos, such as brochures and reports, Recommended made them 40 to 70% lighter, with pages that look the same at normal zoom, and Strong 70 to 85%.

If a form or a website asks for a given size, choose Target size and enter it in KB or MB. If the target can't be reached, the compressor shows the smallest size it could get.

What compression changes, and what it keeps

The compressor recompresses the images of the PDF and scales them down to a target resolution. It also packs the file's internal structure more tightly.

It does not touch the text and the vector graphics: letters, lines, tables and logos stay sharp at any zoom, and the text stays selectable and searchable. Links, form fields, page order and page sizes do not change, and the tags screen readers use are kept, so your PDF stays accessible. PDF/A files stay PDF/A. A signed PDF is kept as it is, so its signature stays valid.

The compressor never gives you a heavier file: if a PDF can't be made lighter, it keeps the original and shows Already optimized.

Why is my PDF so big?

Most heavy PDFs are full of images: photos straight from a phone, slides with large pictures, or pages scanned at a high resolution. A single phone photo can weigh several MB, and a scanned document is made of one image per page.

A PDF made mostly of text is usually light already, and compression saves little on it. A PDF of photos or of color or gray scans, on the other hand, can often become much lighter, because its images are much more detailed than a screen or a printer needs. Black-and-white scans, like faxes, are more compact, but in our tests on real ones, Recommended made them 20 to 35% lighter and Strong 40 to 55%, with text that stays as legible.

Private by design: your PDF never leaves your device

Your PDF is compressed inside your browser, on your device. It is never uploaded to Drime or to anyone else, which matters for payslips, tax returns, contracts and ID scans. Nothing is stored on a server, so there is nothing to delete afterwards. Like the rest of the site, the page counts visits, but never your files.

Password-protected PDFs can't be opened here. Remove the protection first, then open the PDF again.