How to Compress a PDF and Reduce Its File Size
Upload portals and email often cap attachments at 2–25 MB. A scanned document or a photo-heavy report can easily go over that.
MyRoutineTool’s Compress PDF shows the estimated size for each quality level before you download, so you can pick the smallest file that still looks right.
Most PDFs are large because of the images inside them, so the right setting can often cut the size by more than half without touching the text.
Step by step
- Open Compress PDF and select or drop one or more PDF files.
- Choose a quality — Extreme, Recommended or Less — and check the estimated size shown for each file.
- Click Compress, then download each file, or all of them together as a .zip.
Which quality level should I choose?
- Recommended — the best balance for most documents; text stays readable.
- Extreme — the smallest file, for strict upload limits. Check small print is still legible.
- Less — keeps more detail, for documents with photos or fine diagrams.
Why some PDFs barely shrink
Compression works by re-rendering each page as an optimised image. That gives big savings on scans and image-heavy files, but a PDF that is mostly plain text is already compact. MyRoutineTool never hands you a file that is larger than the original — if compression can’t help, it says so.
Compressing to an exact size
If a portal or email has a hard limit, open More options, tick “Aim for a maximum size” and enter the size in KB or MB. Gentler settings are tried first, and the tool only goes as far as it needs; if the size can't be reached, you get the smallest version possible.
Scanned documents
The “Scanned document” mode turns every page into an image for the smallest possible file. Text can no longer be selected afterwards, so use it for scans — not for PDFs whose text you need to copy or search.
Frequently asked questions
Will the text in my PDF still be selectable?
Because pages are rebuilt as images, text in the compressed copy is generally not selectable. Keep your original if you need to copy text, or run OCR PDF on the compressed copy.
Can I compress several PDFs at once?
Yes. Drop multiple files, choose one quality for all of them, and download everything as a single .zip.
What do the levels mean?
Less keeps images sharp at 200 DPI, Recommended uses 150 DPI — good for screens and office printing — and Extreme uses 96 DPI for the smallest file.