Make a PDF smaller so it fits an email attachment or an upload limit. Pick a level or a target size, see the new size before you download, and keep the original if the saving isn't worth it. Free, no watermark, and your file never leaves your browser.
No PDF yet. You can also drop a file on this box.
| Method | What it does |
|---|---|
| Re-compress images | Finds the photos and scans embedded in the PDF, scales any that are larger than needed and saves them again as JPEG. Text, links, fonts and vector drawings are not touched, so text stays sharp and selectable. Saves a lot on photo-heavy PDFs; little on text-only ones. |
| Flatten pages | Draws each page as one JPEG image and builds a new PDF from them. Best for scanned documents, where each page already is a picture. Text is no longer selectable or searchable, and links and form fields are lost. |
It depends on what makes the file big. A PDF from a phone camera or a scanner is mostly large photos, and those often shrink by 70 to 90%. A report exported from Word or Google Docs is mostly text and fonts, which are already compressed, so the gain is small: the page tells you when there is nothing worth saving and lets you keep the original. The levels cap images at about 220 DPI (light), 150 DPI (balanced) or 100 DPI (strong) on an A4 page, with JPEG quality 85, 72 and 55. Balanced is still sharp on screen and fine for printing photos; strong is for email and upload limits.
Re-compress mode uses pdf-lib to read the PDF in your browser, decodes each JPEG or Flate image, redraws it on a canvas at the capped size and replaces it only if the new version is smaller. Images with transparency keep their mask; CMYK, indexed-color and 1-bit images are left as they are. The file is then saved with compressed object streams. Flatten mode uses pdf.js, the PDF engine built into Firefox, to draw every page and embeds the JPEGs at the original page size, so the page count and dimensions don't change. Password-protected PDFs can't be compressed here.
If your PDFs come from web pages or HTML templates (invoices, reports, tickets), the Shotmint API renders them in Chromium with real text, so they stay small and searchable without a compression step:
curl "https://shotmint.creasework.com/v1/pdf?url=https://example.com&format=A4" -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" -o page.pdfEach render is 1 credit. €5 buys 2,000 with no subscription, and credits never expire. Try HTML to PDF or URL to PDF without a key.
Get 25 free renders a month API docs
Is my PDF uploaded? No. Everything runs in JavaScript on this page, so contracts, bank statements and ID scans stay on your device.
Why did my PDF barely shrink? It has no large images, or they are already compressed. Text and fonts can't be made much smaller without changing the document. Try "Flatten pages" only if it is a scan.
Will the quality drop? Only images change. On light and balanced they stay sharp at normal zoom; zoom far in on strong and you will see JPEG softness. Text and vector graphics are untouched in re-compress mode.
Is there a size limit? No limit and no watermark. Very large PDFs depend on your device's memory.
Compress to a size: 100 KB, 200 KB, 500 KB, 1 MB, 2 MB.
Related: grayscale PDF, merge PDF, split PDF, delete PDF pages, rearrange PDF pages, rotate PDF, PDF to JPG, image to PDF, image compressor, watermark PDF, HTML to PDF.
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