Compress PDF to 500 KB

Get a PDF under 500 KB for an online form or an email. The page finds the best quality that still fits and shows the new size before you download. Free, no watermark, and your file never leaves your browser.

PDF file

No PDF yet. You can also drop a file on this box.

Level
Method
Target size

Getting a PDF under 500 KB

500 KB fits a few scanned pages at screen quality. The page tries Light, Balanced, Strong and two extra-small settings in that order and keeps the first result that fits, so you get the best quality that is still under the limit. A one or two page scan from a phone almost always fits with text kept. For longer scans, "Flatten pages" is usually what gets under the limit, because it also drops the scanner's hidden text layer and fonts.

Which method should I pick?

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.

How much smaller will it get?

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.

How it works

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.

Generating PDFs that are small from the start?

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.pdf

Each 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

FAQ

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.