Reduce a PDF to 100, 200 or 500 KB

Pick the size the form allows and choose your PDF. The tool re-draws each page as a compact picture and finds the best quality that fits under the limit.

How it works

The tool renders each page at 150 DPI and saves it as a JPEG at one quality for all pages. If the PDF is still too big, it lowers the resolution step by step (120, 100, 85 and 72 DPI). If even 72 DPI at the lowest quality is too big, it stops and tells you instead of making an unreadable file.

With Black and white ticked, grey paper and shadows become white, the text becomes pure black, and each page is stored as a sharp black-and-white picture, starting at 200 DPI. For text pages such as certificates and mark sheets this is often several times smaller than the colour version, so many pages fit under 100 or 200 KB. Photos inside the PDF look rough in this mode, so leave it off for pages that are mainly a photo.

If your PDF is already under the limit, the tool first checks that the file opens (it is not damaged and has no password), then says so and you can keep the original.

Good to know

• Password-protected PDFs cannot be opened. Remove the password first.
• Long PDFs take longer on a phone. Above 20 pages it may take a minute; the limit in this version is 60 pages.
• “Under 200 KB” is taken as 200,000 bytes, so the file passes whether the portal counts 1 KB as 1000 or 1024 bytes.
• Always open the result and check that every page is readable before you upload it.