Our new Compress PDF tool shrinks a PDF’s file size without ever leaving your browser tab, by combining the two PDF libraries already powering other tools on this site.
- Two libraries, one pipeline —
pdfjs-distrenders each page onto an in-page canvas at your chosen resolution, thenpdf-libembeds that page as a JPEG into a brand-new PDF sized to match the original page’s real dimensions. - Three compression levels — Low, Medium (default), and High quality trade file size against visual sharpness, from a 1.0× render at 50% JPEG quality up to a 1.8× render at 85% quality.
- Before/after, side by side — once compression finishes, you see the original size, the new size, and the real percentage change, not a guess.
- Private by default — the file never leaves your device; every step runs in plain JavaScript in your browser tab.
The honest tradeoff: this works by turning each page into an image, which is why it shrinks scanned and image-heavy PDFs so effectively — but it means the output has no selectable or searchable text, even if the original did. If you need to keep text selectable, this isn’t the tool for that job, and we say so right on the page instead of letting you find out the hard way.
Try the embeddable widget too.