The document workshop / Find your approach
PDF Compression Hub
Find the right way to shrink your PDF — by limit, by quality, by platform, or by privacy need.
This hub is a map, not a menu. The tool itself is one click away — what most people actually need first is to work out which approach fits their file. So we have grouped everything into clusters: getting under an email limit, hitting a specific size, protecting quality, sending to a particular platform, working on a phone, and handling sensitive documents. Pick the one that matches your problem and it points you at the right mode.
If you already know your constraint, jump straight to its cluster. If you just want the file smaller and aren't sure where to start, open the tool on Email mode, check the result, and step down to a numbered target only if it's still too big. Either way the work happens in your browser — your PDF is never uploaded to our servers, so the file stays with you the whole time.
When the tool produces a transformed copy, it rebuilds each page as a JPEG image. Fine detail can soften, selectable text and OCR are lost, and links, forms, accessibility structure and digital signatures do not survive. Keep your source file. If a numbered target is already met without another requested transformation, or a normal compression candidate offers no saving, the original is kept unchanged. Remove metadata is the exception: the cleaned output is returned even if it is larger.
The current processing limits are 50 MB of input, 200 pages, 16 megapixels per rendered page and five minutes per task. Here 1 MB means 1,000,000 bytes. These limits are safeguards, not a promise that every device can finish every accepted document. Choose a mode, inspect its result and download only when you accept its warnings.
Start with your constraint.
A mode is a starting point. Always check the size, readability, and warnings in your result.
| Your situation | Mode | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Get a PDF under an email attachment limit | Balanced size and clarity, tuned for typical inboxes. The right first try; step down to a numbered target if it bounces. | |
| Hit a specific size ceiling (5, 10 or 25MB) | Under 10MB | Numbered modes calibrate toward a target across several passes. Pick the ceiling you actually need — see the Limits cluster. |
| Keep it sharp for printing or a portfolio | High Quality | Highest starting resolution and JPEG quality, in colour. Inspect small text and print detail; a larger file is not proof of better quality. |
| Shrink a scanned document | Scanned | Rebuilds monochrome scans as grayscale page images. A saving is not guaranteed; meaningful colour is lost. |
| Handle a sensitive document | Remove metadata | Processes on your device and strips metadata from the result. See the Privacy cluster for what that does and does not cover. |
Browse by need.
Quick answers, practical guidance, and the trade-offs behind each choice.
Email & attachments
Get a PDF under your provider's attachment limit without guesswork.
Explore topicHit a target size
Targeting 5MB, 10MB or 25MB? Here's how the numbered modes work — and why they're best-effort.
Explore topicKeep it readable
How to keep pages clear while making the file smaller — and what the trade-off really is.
Explore topicPlatforms & apps
Email, chat apps, portals and cloud storage each handle PDFs differently. Here's how to fit them.
Explore topicPhone & desktop
Phone or laptop, the file stays on your device — but big PDFs behave differently on each.
Explore topicPrivacy & security
What "in-browser" protects, what it doesn't, and how to check for yourself.
Explore topic