Compress PDF
Re-renders pages as compressed JPEGs. Best for scanned/visual PDFs (text becomes part of the image).
About this tool
Shrink PDF file size by re-rendering each page as a compressed JPEG. Perfect for emailing scans that exceed attachment limits, uploading documents to size-capped forms (insurance portals, government sites), or archiving image-heavy PDFs efficiently.
Privvert lets you choose a quality preset (high / medium / low) and a target DPI. Higher quality and DPI mean a bigger file but cleaner text and images. Everything runs in your browser - confidential PDFs never leave your machine.
PDF size is dominated by embedded images and fonts. Privvert downsamples high-DPI images to a screen-friendly resolution (typically 150 DPI), re-encodes them with JPEG or JBIG2 depending on content type, subsets embedded fonts to only the characters actually used, and prunes orphan objects. Vector content, text and form fields are preserved exactly - only the bulky bitmap data is reduced.
Features
- Three quality presets plus custom JPEG quality
- Target DPI control (72 / 96 / 150 / 300)
- Preserves original page dimensions and orientation
- Works on any PDF - including scans, photos, mixed content
- Output is a standard PDF that opens in every viewer
- Browser-only - files never uploaded
- Free, no signup, no watermark
How to use it
- Drop in your PDF.
- Pick a quality preset (or set custom JPEG quality + DPI).
- Click Compress.
- Download the compressed PDF.
Everything happens inside your browser using JavaScript and WebAssembly. Your files are never uploaded to a server, never stored, and never seen by us.
Frequently asked questions
No - this method flattens each page to an image, so selectable text and embedded fonts are lost. For text-preserving compression, you need a desktop tool like Adobe Acrobat that can re-compress images while keeping text vector data.
Image-heavy PDFs (scans, brochures) typically shrink 60-90% at the medium preset. Text-only PDFs get smaller too but the savings are less dramatic.
Medium is the sweet spot for most uses - readable, prints fine, much smaller. Use High for documents you'll print at full quality, Low for quick web previews.
No - flattening removes the text layer. Re-OCR the compressed PDF if you need searchable text.
Yes - text objects, fonts and the text layer are preserved exactly. Only embedded images and orphan resources are compressed. See the print-to-PDF article for why hidden text matters even after compression.
Scanned documents (image-heavy) typically shrink by 60-90% at 150 DPI. Native PDFs (text-heavy, exported from Word or InDesign) shrink less - often 10-30% - because there's less redundant bitmap data to compress.