A PDF grows heavy for almost always the same reason: it holds full-resolution images, often scanned pages. Mailboxes usually cap at 10 or 25 MB, and public services often lower still.
How it works
Drop your file on the page, or click to pick it from your folders.
Start the job. It runs inside your browser: nothing is sent to a server.
Download the result. No account, no watermark, no queue.
When this really helps
Get an attachment through
A 40 MB scanned file commonly drops below 5 MB.
Upload to an online service
Most refuse anything beyond a few megabytes.
Archive without filling the disk
Hundreds of documents take far less room.
What the conversion keeps, and what it loses
Working inside a browser comes with limits a hosted service does not have. Here they are in plain words, so you know what to expect before you start.
What is kept
- The look of every page, fonts and images included
- Size and page count
- Colours
- A document readable on screen and in everyday printing
What is not carried over
- Selectable text and searching inside the document
- Clickable links and bookmarks
- Form fields
- Some fine detail, in proportion to the level chosen
Worth knowing about the format
Compression here means redrawing each page as a JPEG image at the chosen resolution. That is effective on scans and image-rich documents; on a text-only PDF, already very compact, the tool hands you back the original rather than inflating it.
Not the right tool?
- PDF → JPG — Pour récupérer directement les pages en images plutôt qu'un PDF allégé.
- Split a PDF — Parfois il vaut mieux envoyer le document en deux fois que le dégrader.
- Delete pages — Retirer les pages inutiles allège souvent plus sûrement qu'une compression.
Why it's free
Online converters receive your file on their servers, process it, then promise to delete it. Every document costs them computing time: that is why they charge, and why they cap file sizes.
Here, the work happens on your own computer. The page contains no server code: your document cannot be received, because it is never sent. So there is nothing to bill, nothing to cap, and nothing to delete afterwards. Cut your connection once the page has loaded — everything keeps working.
Frequently asked questions
How much smaller will my file get?
On a scanned document the reduction often passes 80 %. On a PDF born in a word processor it is small or nil: those files are already compact. In that case the tool says so and returns your original untouched.
Why is the text no longer selectable?
Because genuinely compressing a PDF means re-encoding its images, which only a server engine can do while preserving the text layer. Here every page is redrawn as an image: honest and effective, but the text becomes picture.
Can I compress a 500-page document?
Yes, no limit is imposed. Just allow time: every page is redrawn one by one in your browser.
Other tools
Edit the text in a PDF — Fix a line that is already written, even on a scanned document. This is the feature other services charge for, and the natural starting point when you need to retouch before converting.