Compress PDF to Target Size

How target-size compression works

Most PDF compressors let you choose “low, medium or high” and hope for the best. Government and university portals, though, ask for a hard limit like “maximum 200 KB”. This tool works backwards from your limit: it renders every page as an image at a readable resolution, tries a range of JPEG quality levels, and picks the best quality that keeps the whole file under your target. If it can’t fit at 150 DPI, it steps down the resolution until it can, stopping before text becomes unreadable.

Important: text becomes an image

Because pages are rebuilt as images, the compressed PDF looks the same but text can no longer be selected, searched or copied. That’s fine for uploading certificates, bank statements and application documents, but keep your original for everything else.

Get smaller files

• Black & white: scanned documents usually have no meaningful colour. Converting to grayscale often halves the size and keeps text sharp.
• Remove extra pages: drop blank or unnecessary pages with organize PDF first.
• Split large documents: if a portal allows several uploads, split the PDF and compress each part.

Quick sizes

Popular limits have their own pages: 100 KB, 200 KB and 500 KB. Results stay below the limit measured in 1,000-byte kilobytes, so they pass on every portal.

Already small enough?

If your PDF is already under the target, the tool tells you so, and you can upload the original without any loss.

Privacy

PDFs often contain bank details, Aadhaar numbers and addresses. Here, the file is opened and rebuilt entirely in your browser; it is never sent to a server. Password-protected PDFs must be unlocked first with unlock PDF.

Tip

Compressing an already-compressed PDF again rarely helps and can reduce clarity. Start from the original each time you try a new size.