Tool StudioShrink a PDF to an exact KB target — or just make it smaller
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Drag and drop the file you want to shrink, or click to browse.
Pick a target size or a quality level
Type the KB size a form asks for, or choose Low, Medium or High if you just want it smaller.
Download the compressed file
Check the before/after size, then download — ready to email or upload.
PDFs bloat fast — a few scanned pages or a couple of embedded photos and you are well past what an email attachment or a government upload form allows. This tool compresses it back down, either to a general "smaller" setting or to a specific KB target you type in yourself.
Type a number into the target size field — 100 for 100KB, 500 for 500KB, whatever the form asks for — and it works through three compression levels internally, keeping the least aggressive one that still lands under your target. No target set, it uses the level you pick directly: Low for the smallest possible file, Medium for a balanced result, or High when quality matters more than size.
Compression works by downsampling the images inside the PDF and compressing redundant data in its structure — the actual text and vector content (fonts, lines, page layout) is not rasterized or degraded by this process, so a text-heavy document usually barely changes in appearance even at aggressive settings. Where the size actually comes from is embedded photos and scans, and that is where the savings show up.
One thing worth knowing before you use this on an important document: compressing a digitally signed PDF invalidates the signature. The compression process rewrites the file from scratch, and a digital signature is a cryptographic check against the exact original bytes — any modification breaks it, compression included. If a document has already been signed, compress it before signing next time, or get it re-signed after.
Your file is uploaded, compressed, and deleted automatically afterwards — we do not keep it and do not need an account from you.
Type the number into the target size field — 100 for 100KB, 500 for 500KB. The tool works through its compression levels and keeps the least aggressive one that still fits under your target.
It can, but only where the size actually comes from: embedded images get downsampled and recompressed, which is lossy. Text, fonts and vector graphics (lines, shapes, page layout) are not rasterized or degraded by this process, so a text-heavy document typically looks the same even after aggressive compression.
Yes. Compression rewrites the file, and a digital signature is a cryptographic check against the exact original bytes — any change invalidates it, this tool included. If a document needs to stay signed, compress it beforehand, not after.
Use the High quality preset, or set a generous KB target rather than an aggressive one. Some quality loss in embedded images is unavoidable with any lossy compressor — be skeptical of a tool that claims otherwise.
Close, not exact. This tool has three discrete compression levels rather than a continuous dial, so it keeps whichever level lands closest to your target without going over. It may take slightly longer than a plain compress, since it can try more than one level before returning a result.
Yes — free, unlimited, no sign-up.
It is uploaded, compressed, and deleted automatically afterwards. We do not keep it and do not need an account from you.
If the original has little image content — mostly text, like a Word-exported PDF — there is not much for a compressor to remove; the file was already close to its minimum size. Image-heavy or scanned PDFs shrink far more, often 50% or better.
Not in its main compression tool — iLovePDF's Compress offers three preset quality levels (Extreme, Recommended, Less), not an exact-KB target. Their actual workaround for a strict size requirement is a completely different tool, Split by Size, which splits your PDF into multiple smaller files under a limit rather than compressing it down to one file at your target size. This tool does that directly — type the KB target, get one file at that size, no splitting involved.
50MB per file — the same document-upload limit that applies across every PDF tool on this site.
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