Compress PDF Files Without Uploading
Reduce PDF file size without handing the document to a server. Compression runs locally in your browser, so sensitive scans and reports stay private.
How it works
- Open this page and add the PDF you want to shrink.
- Choose a compression level — Low, Medium or High — to balance size and quality.
- Compress and download the smaller file.
- The document never left your device; nothing was queued or stored remotely.
When this helps
- Getting a confidential scan under an email attachment limit.
- Shrinking contracts or medical records before uploading them to an official portal.
- Reducing a large report on a work computer where file-upload sites are blocked.
- Lightening archived statements without creating an account anywhere.
Limits and notes
- Higher compression levels trade away image quality inside the PDF.
- Already-optimized PDFs may not shrink much further.
- Processing very large files depends on your device, not a server queue.
What local PDF compression means
Server-based PDF compressors see every page of the document you upload. This page re-compresses the images inside your PDF right in the browser tab, so the file contents are never exposed to a third party. Verify it yourself: load the page, disconnect from the network, and compression still works.
What you can do next
FAQ
Are my PDFs uploaded?
No. Pages are rendered with pdf.js and rebuilt with pdf-lib entirely in your browser. The file never leaves your device.
How does compression work?
Each page is rasterized and re-encoded as JPEG, then placed back into a new PDF. Scans and image-heavy files shrink the most. Text-only PDFs may not get smaller — they become images of the pages.
Will the text stay selectable?
No. This is a lossy, image-based compress. If you need selectable text, keep the original or use a desktop optimizer that recompresses embedded images without flattening.