Compress PDF
Reduce PDF file size without losing quality. Processed locally in your browser — files never uploaded.
Drop files here
or click to browse — any number of files
Reduce PDF file size without losing quality. Processed locally in your browser — files never uploaded.
Large PDFs clog email inboxes, fail to upload to web forms, and eat cloud storage. PDFree's compressor removes hidden bloat from your PDF — duplicate objects, embedded thumbnails, over-sized images — entirely inside your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
Click Choose files or drag your PDF into the drop zone. Any file size is accepted — compression happens in your browser, not on a server.
Select Light (5–15% smaller, best quality), Medium (30–50%, balanced), or Heavy (50–70%, smallest file). Medium works for most emails and web uploads.
Click Compress PDF. Processing takes a few seconds. The download starts automatically — your file never left your device.
Most email providers cap attachments at 25MB. Compressing a scan-heavy PDF from 40MB down to 10MB lets you send it without switching to a file-sharing link.
Government portals, job application sites, and legal filing systems often cap uploads at 5–10MB. Compress first to avoid the 'file too large' rejection.
If you archive hundreds of PDFs, compressing each one 40–60% adds up to gigabytes of recovered space on Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud.
Sending a PDF over WhatsApp, Signal, or iMessage? A 20MB file can take a minute on LTE. Compress to 4MB and it sends instantly.
| Tool | Max file size (free) | Daily limit | Privacy | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PDFree | No limit | No limit | No upload | Free forever |
| iLovePDF | ~25 MB | Daily limit | Uploaded to servers | Free / $6+/mo |
| SmallPDF | ~15 MB | 2 tasks/day | Uploaded to servers | Free / $9+/mo |
| Adobe Acrobat | 100 MB | 2/month free | Uploaded to servers | $19.99/mo |
Typical reduction is 20–70%. PDFs full of high-resolution images (scans, photos, brochures) compress the most. Text-only PDFs see less reduction since text is already stored efficiently. The 'Heavy' preset reduces image quality to 72%, giving the largest size savings.
No. Text in PDFs is vector-based and is not affected by image compression. Only raster images embedded in the PDF are recompressed. On the 'Light' setting even images are untouched — only metadata and hidden redundant objects are removed.
PDFs often contain hidden bloat: page thumbnails Adobe Reader auto-generates, duplicate font tables, embedded color profiles, and metadata strings. PDFree strips these invisible extras. The visible content is identical.
PDFree cannot modify encrypted PDFs. You would need to remove the password first using the Protect PDF tool (which can also remove passwords), then compress.
No. PDFree has no upload limit because nothing is uploaded. The only practical limit is your device's available RAM. Most computers comfortably handle PDFs up to several hundred megabytes.
No. Compression runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your PDF is loaded into browser memory, processed locally, and the result is offered as a download. No data is sent to any server.