Compress a PDF to 1 MB and under

Upload forms that cap files at 1 MB or 2 MB are where scanned PDFs get stuck. This tool can compress a PDF to 1 MB or less in many cases, especially scans, and it shows you the result size before you download anything.

How it works

The tool opens your PDF in the browser and redraws each page as an image at a set resolution, then saves the page as a JPEG inside a new PDF. The three levels set the resolution and the JPEG quality:

Level	Resolution	Good for
Strong	about 72 dpi	reading on a screen, tight upload limits
Balanced	about 110 dpi	reading on screen and printing
Light	about 150 dpi	keeping fine detail close to the original

When it finishes, you’ll see something like “4.8 MB → 690 KB (86% smaller)”. Those two numbers are what matter. If the compressed copy isn’t at least slightly smaller than the original, the tool says so and suggests keeping the original or trying Strong.

What you give up

Redrawing pages as images is what makes scans shrink, and it has a cost. Read this before you compress a document you’ll need to edit later.

• Text is no longer selectable or searchable. Each page becomes a picture. If the original had a text layer (from OCR or a word processor), the compressed copy doesn’t.
• Links and form fields stop working. They’re drawn into the image, so they look the same but can’t be clicked or filled.
• Text-heavy PDFs may not shrink. A 30-page report exported from a word processor is already small. This method suits scans, photos and image-heavy files.

Keep the original. The compressed copy is for sending.

Getting under 1 MB, 2 MB or an email limit

Page count and color drive the final size more than anything else. A 2-page black-and-white scan usually lands well under 1 MB on Balanced, while a 40-page color scan may not fit under 1 MB even on Strong.

For tight limits, work down the levels: Balanced first, then Strong. If Strong still doesn’t fit, send fewer pages. The split PDF tool pulls out just the pages the form asks for.

For email, the limits are far more generous than most upload forms. Gmail’s help page gives 25 MB for personal accounts and swaps anything bigger for a Google Drive link. Microsoft lists 25 MB per attached file for Outlook.com, while another of its pages says 20 MB for the whole message, so aim under 20 MB.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser tab: the PDF is opened there, every page is redrawn there, and the smaller file is saved back to your device. The file isn’t uploaded, which matters when it’s a tax return or an ID scan.

Limits

• Up to 25 MB and 50 pages per file. Larger files are refused with a message rather than left to hang.
• Password-protected PDFs aren’t supported. Remove the password first, compress, then protect the smaller copy again if you need to.
• Phones are slower. Redrawing 50 pages takes a while on a phone browser. Keep the tab open until the progress bar finishes.

On your phone

Scanpaper can make the file small at the moment you export it, on iPhone and Android. Choose Original, Medium or Small (“email friendly”) in the export settings and share the PDF straight from your phone. Compression is part of Scanpaper Pro, which has a free trial; the free tier exports full-size PDFs with a small “Scanned with Scanpaper” line in one corner.