Compress PDF Online
Shrink a PDF to a smaller size — privately, in your browser. Best for scans and image-heavy reports.
Drop a PDF here to compress
Rasterizes pages to JPEG-in-PDF — best for scans and image-heavy docs
How to compress a PDF online
Drop a PDF onto the box above. Pick a preset — Balanced is the right default for almost everything. The tool renders each page in your browser, re-encodes it as a JPEG inside a new PDF, and gives you the result with a before/after size shown. The original file is untouched and the compressed copy never leaves your device.
What this tool is good at — and what it is not
ToolChop's compressor excels at image-heavy PDFs: scanned documents, slides exported from Keynote/PowerPoint, magazines, photo books, contracts with embedded scans. On those, 50–85% size reduction is typical.
It is not the best choice for text-only PDFs that were originally exported from a word processor. Those are already efficiently compressed, and rasterizing them removes the searchable text layer. For text-heavy PDFs, the better path is to use Split PDF to remove pages you do not need.
What you can do
- Three quality presets — High, Balanced, Aggressive
- Per-page progress while compressing
- Before/after size, plus percentage savings
- Original page dimensions and orientation preserved
- No watermark, no signup, no upload, no daily limit
Frequently asked questions
How do I compress a PDF online for free?
Drop a PDF onto the box above, choose a quality preset, and click Compress. The smaller PDF is built in your browser and downloaded with one click. No account, no upload, no watermark.
Does ToolChop upload my PDF to a server?
No. The compression runs entirely in your browser using pdf.js and jsPDF. Your file never leaves your device — there is no upload, no temporary storage, and no copy on our servers. That is the main reason to use ToolChop for confidential documents.
How much can I shrink a PDF?
Photo-heavy and scanned PDFs typically shrink 60–85% at the Balanced preset. Text-only PDFs that were already well-optimized may shrink only 10–30% — the existing PDF compression was already efficient. Try Aggressive for the smallest files.
What is the trade-off — what does compression cost me?
ToolChop rasterizes each page to a JPEG and embeds it in a new PDF. The visible content is preserved at the selected quality, but the original text layer is dropped — meaning the resulting PDF cannot be text-searched or copy-pasted. For text-heavy documents you need to keep searchable, use Split PDF to reduce the page count instead.
Which preset should I pick?
Start with Balanced — it is the right choice for ~90% of files. Use High if the PDF will be printed or contains fine line art. Use Aggressive when you need to fit under a strict size limit (email attachment, upload form) and the content is mostly photos or scans.
Why is text in the compressed PDF slightly soft?
Because compression rasterizes text into a JPEG. At Balanced (1.5× scale) text is sharp on screen and good for print at small sizes. For poster-grade printing of small text, use High (2× scale). For dense academic papers you want to keep searchable, do not compress at all — split the PDF instead.
Can I compress a password-protected PDF?
If the PDF has owner-level encryption only (the common case), ToolChop can open it. If a user password is required to open the document, unlock it in your PDF reader first and save an unlocked copy.
Is there a file size limit?
Only your browser's memory. We have compressed 100 MB+ PDFs in modern Chrome and Safari. For multi-GB PDFs the load step may take 30–60 seconds because the entire file is held in RAM.
Why is the compressed PDF sometimes larger than the original?
Two cases: (1) the source was already a tightly compressed scan, so re-encoding adds JPEG overhead; (2) you picked the High preset on a document that was previously aggressive. Try the Balanced or Aggressive preset, or accept that this particular PDF is already near its size floor.
Why use ToolChop instead of iLovePDF or Smallpdf?
Both upload your PDF to a server. For contracts, payslips, ID scans, medical records, or anything internal, that is an unnecessary risk. ToolChop runs the compression locally in your browser, so the file never leaves your device.
Can I batch compress multiple PDFs?
Right now the tool handles one PDF at a time so you can see the before/after size and pick a preset. Batch mode is on the roadmap. For now, drop each file individually — the second one starts in under a second.
Will hyperlinks and annotations survive compression?
No — because compression rebuilds the PDF from rendered images, hyperlinks, form fields, and annotations are stripped. If you need to keep clickable links, do not compress; instead use Split PDF to reduce the file by removing unneeded pages.
How do I compress a PDF under 1 MB or under 5 MB?
Use the Aggressive preset and check the result. If you are still over the target, split out unneeded pages first using Split PDF and then compress — together they often hit 200 KB per page for scanned content.