Compress PDF Online - Reduce File Size Free

PDF compression is weirdly misunderstood. Most people think "compression" means making files smaller by reducing quality, like JPEGs. But PDFs aren't images - they're containers that can hold images, fonts, text, and metadata. Good compression removes bloat without touching quality. Bad compression destroys your images and makes text blurry. Our compression tool does the smart kind. It looks for actual waste in your PDF - duplicate embedded fonts (happens when merging PDFs), unoptimized images (like a 600 DPI scan when you only need 150 DPI for screen viewing), and metadata bloat (edit history, annotations, JavaScript, hidden content). The typical PDF has way more resolution than necessary. A scan at 300 DPI looks identical to 600 DPI on screen and even when printed on standard printers, but the 600 DPI version is 4x larger. We downsample intelligently based on how the PDF will be used. For email attachments, we can compress aggressively because people are viewing on screens. For PDFs going to print shops, we preserve higher quality. The tool also removes duplicate objects - if the same logo appears on 50 pages, most PDF creators embed it 50 times instead of once. We optimize that. One thing that surprised me when testing compression tools: the file size difference between "no compression" and "smart compression" on typical business PDFs is usually 60-75%. That 12MB proposal becomes 3MB with zero visible quality loss. And that matters when you're emailing files or uploading to websites with size limits.