Compress a PDF
Get a PDF under an upload limit, with the resulting file size shown before you commit to downloading it.
Free · no sign-up · your file never leaves your device
Almost every compression job starts with a hard number: a portal that refuses files over 2 MB, an email that bounces at 10 MB, an application form with a 500 KB cap. What you need is not a vague promise of smaller — it is the actual figure, before you download and check.
PeppyPDF runs the compression on your device and then tells you exactly what came out the other side, alongside the original, so you can try a different preset if you are still over the line.
How to compress a PDF
Three steps, and nothing to install.
Open your PDF
Drag the file in. The current size is shown at the top of the compression dialog for comparison.
Pick a preset
Open Tools → Compress and choose High quality, Balanced or Smallest file, then press Compress. The work happens locally, page by page.
Check the number, then save
The result appears with its exact size and the percentage saved. Not small enough? Switch preset and run it again before downloading anything.
What makes this one different
High quality keeps text sharp
The lossless preset rewrites the file structure and strips metadata without touching the page content, so text stays perfectly crisp and fully selectable.
Balanced and Smallest go further
These re-render pages at 130 or 96 DPI, which cuts size dramatically on image-heavy scans. The trade-off is stated plainly in the app: text becomes part of the image and is no longer selectable.
Numbers before commitment
You see the before and after size and the exact percentage saved, so getting under a portal limit is one comparison rather than a download-and-retry loop.
Progress you can watch
Long scans report page-by-page progress rather than an indeterminate spinner, so you know whether to wait or try a different preset.
Questions
The things people ask most about this tool.
Which preset should I choose?
Start with High quality — if the file is mostly text it often shrinks meaningfully with no visual loss at all. Move to Balanced or Smallest only when you need to hit a specific size limit.
Why did my file get bigger instead of smaller?
Some PDFs are already tightly optimised, and re-rendering their pages as images produces more data than the original vector content. The app tells you when this happens so you can pick the High quality preset instead.
Will I still be able to select text after compressing?
With High quality, yes. Balanced and Smallest convert pages to images, so text becomes part of the picture and can no longer be selected or searched.
Does compressing lose image quality?
High quality does not touch images at all. Balanced and Smallest re-encode them as JPEG at 130 and 96 DPI respectively — fine for screen reading and normal printing, less so for fine detail.
Is there a file size limit?
No hard limit. Very large scanned documents take longer because every page is re-rendered on your own machine, and progress is shown page by page.
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