Compress a PDF without losing quality
Opens on the Recommended level: pictures kept at screen and print sharpness, text untouched. See below what that did to real files.
- Free to use
- Works on any device
- Deleted after processing
- Text stays vector-sharp
- Sized for email
- Every page kept
- The original is untouched
Make your PDF smaller and keep it sharp
Text stays sharp at every level · your upload is deleted as soon as the smaller file is built
Drag & drop file here
or choose a file from your device
How it works
Compress PDF Without Losing Quality in three steps
Add your PDF
Drop it in or pick it from your device.
Recommended is already chosen
Pictures are kept at 150 DPI or more; text, lines and fonts are not touched. Choose Light for files that will be professionally printed.
Compare, then download
The result shows how much smaller the file is. If it did not get smaller, you are told and your original is the better copy.
Quality on our test files, level by level
Five real files, each compressed at all three levels. To judge quality, we drew every page of the original and the result at the same size and counted the share of the page that looked different (a change a person could see, not a tiny shift in shade). Measured on October 21, 2026.
| Test file | Light | Recommended | Strong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photo brochure, 6 pages, 1.27 MB | 1.28 MB, no change | 596 KB, no visible change | 114 KB, 1.2% of the page changed |
| Scanned invoice, 1 page, color, 1.0 MB | 1.0 MB, no change | 91 KB, 1.1% changed | 33 KB, 3.2% changed |
| Scanned letter, 3 pages, grayscale, 4.0 MB | 4.0 MB, no change | 650 KB, 5% changed | 240 KB, 12% changed |
| Scanned report, 12 pages, color, 16.7 MB | 16.7 MB, no change | 2.6 MB | 959 KB |
| Letter with one photo, 3 pages, 415 KB | 415 KB, no change | 412 KB, no change | 412 KB, no change |
The photo brochure is the case this page is about: half the size and nothing you can see. Scans lose a little at Recommended because they are pictures through and through. The letter barely changed at any level, because its one photo was already small.
What “quality” means in a PDF
A PDF holds two kinds of things. Text, lines and shapes are instructions: “draw these letters in this font here”. They have no resolution, so they are as sharp on a billboard as on a phone, and compressing never touches them. Photos and scans are pictures made of pixels, and they are where almost all of a file's size is.
Compressing without visible loss means shrinking those pictures only down to what a screen or a home printer can show: about 150 DPI. Below that, you start to see it.
Read next: Compress a PDF on a Mac without losing quality · All compression levels
Frequently asked questions about Compress PDF Without Losing Quality
Can you really compress a PDF without losing any quality?
Text, yes: fonts and lines are kept exactly, at any level. Pictures, almost: the Recommended level keeps them at 150 DPI or more, and on our photo PDF no part of the page looked different afterwards. Truly untouched pictures save little, which is what the Light level shows.
Which level should I pick?
Recommended for nearly everything you send, share or upload. Light for artwork going to a print shop. Strong only when you need the smallest file and soft photos do not matter.
Why did Light not make my file smaller?
Because Light leaves pictures as they are, and pictures are most of a PDF's weight. On all five of our test files Light changed the size by less than 1%. That is the honest price of changing nothing.
Does compressing a scan lose quality?
A little. A scan is one big picture, so making it smaller always softens it. At Recommended, a one-page color scan went from 1.0 MB to 91 KB and about 1% of the page looked different, mostly the edges of letters.
Will it change my fonts, links or form fields?
No. Only pictures are re-saved. Text stays selectable and searchable, and links and fillable fields are kept.
Full step-by-step guide
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