How to compress a PDF for email and upload limits

Email providers usually cap attachments at 20–25 MB, and application portals often allow only 2 MB or even 500 KB per document. A scanned contract or a report full of photos easily exceeds that. The fix is to compress the PDF, but the right amount depends on what is inside.

Why some PDFs are huge

• Scans and photos are stored as high-resolution images. A phone scan of 10 pages can be 30 MB.
• Presentations exported to PDF often keep every image at full camera resolution.
• Text-only PDFs are already small. A 20-page letter is usually under 200 KB and cannot shrink much.

Compress a PDF in 3 steps

1. Open Compress PDF and upload your file.
2. Choose a level: Balanced for most files, Strong for the smallest size, Light when the PDF will be printed.
3. Click Process. You see the size before and after, and the smaller PDF downloads right away.

Which level should I pick?

• Balanced reduces images to screen quality (about 150 dpi). Text stays sharp, photos still look good on screen. A scanned or photo-heavy PDF often shrinks by 70–90%.
• Strong goes down to about 72 dpi. Use it for strict upload limits; photos get visibly softer but text stays readable.
• Light keeps print quality (about 300 dpi). It mainly helps PDFs with oversized images and does little for already-optimised files.

If the PDF cannot get any smaller at the level you chose, you get a message and no credits are used.

Still too big?

Split the document with Split PDF and send it in parts, or remove pages you do not need with Delete PDF Pages. If the portal accepts images, Compress Image to Size can hit an exact limit such as 200 KB.