Compress PDF

Reduce PDF file size up to 95% using Ghostscript compression.

  • Server processing · auto-deleted
  • Up to 100 MB
  • No signup

Drop a PDF here or click to upload

Ghostscript compression. Up to 95% size reduction (max 100 MB)

Choose file

How to use Compress PDF

  1. Upload your PDF

    Drop the PDF you want to shrink. It is sent securely to our server, where Ghostscript does the compression.

  2. Pick a quality level

    Screen for the smallest file, Ebook for the best balance (recommended), or Printer to keep print quality.

  3. Download the smaller file

    See how much you saved and download. Your file is deleted from the server as soon as it is sent back.

How to reduce PDF file size

Large PDFs bounce off email attachment limits, fail on upload forms and are slow to open on phones. Drible compresses PDFs with Ghostscript, the engine print shops and publishers rely on, which can cut scanned and image-heavy files by 70 to 95 percent while keeping text crisp.

Why PDFs get so big

Almost all of a PDF's weight comes from images: scans saved at 300 DPI or more, photos pasted into documents at full camera resolution, and embedded fonts. Text itself is tiny. Compression works mainly by resampling those images to a sensible resolution and re-encoding them, and by removing duplicated or unused resources.

Choosing Screen, Ebook or Printer

Each preset targets a different image resolution:

  • Screen (72 DPI): the smallest file. Ideal for email, web pages and documents people only read on screen.
  • Ebook (150 DPI): the recommended balance. Text and diagrams stay clear on any screen and in most office printing.
  • Printer (300 DPI): keeps high resolution for documents you will print professionally. Savings are smaller.

Your privacy

The file is sent over HTTPS to our server, converted, and deleted as soon as the result is sent back to you. A cleanup job also removes anything older than 30 minutes, so nothing lingers if a conversion is interrupted. If our server is ever unavailable, the tool falls back to a lighter compression that runs in your browser, so you still get a result.

When compression does little

Text-only PDFs exported from Word or Google Docs are usually already small, so savings are modest. PDFs that were compressed before may barely shrink. We always hand back whichever version is smaller, so compressing never makes your file worse.

Step-by-step guides

Compress PDF: frequently asked questions

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