Compress PDFs
Shrink PDF file size with light, standard or strong compression.
File order is honored
Drop your files here
or click to browse
.pdf · Max file size 100 MB · Max files 5
How to compress a PDF
- 1Drop one or more PDF files into the box above.
- 2Pick a compression level: light, standard or strong.
- 3Click Compress and compare the new size before downloading.
Why PDFs get so big
Scanners and export menus often save every page as a full-resolution image. A ten-page scan can weigh hundreds of megabytes even though the text on it looks tiny. Email providers cap attachments — Gmail at 25 MB, Outlook at 20 MB — and many portals reject anything above a few megabytes, so the same document that opens fine locally fails to upload.
How Zashify compresses PDFs
Pages are rendered once and rebuilt into a leaner PDF: images are resampled and re-encoded at the level you choose, while layout, orientation and reading order are preserved. Compression runs in your browser, so the file is never uploaded.
Choosing a compression level
- Light: the smallest visual change, for documents that must stay close to print quality.
- Standard: the default, and usually the best balance for scans and photo-heavy pages.
- Strong: maximum shrinking when the file just has to fit under a limit — expect visibly softer images.
Checking the result before you download
The workbench shows the original and compressed sizes side by side, so you can see the saving before committing. If a compressed file is still too big, run it again with a stronger level — a second pass re-encodes the rebuilt images and usually shrinks them further.
Which PDFs shrink the most
- Scans and photo pages: by far the biggest savings.
- Forms and text pages: moderate gains — they are already efficient.
- Already optimized or text-only PDFs: may barely change. The tool keeps the original if the compressed copy would be bigger.