Compress a PDF to send it by email

Why a PDF can be so heavy

A PDF can be large for several reasons: pages scanned as images, high-resolution photos, embedded fonts or duplicated content inside the file. And many email services limit the size of attachments (Gmail, for example, allows about 25 MB), so a heavy PDF may bounce or never leave your outbox.

How to compress a PDF in 3 steps

1. Open the Compress PDF tool.
2. Drag your file or press Select files. Wait a few seconds: you will see how much it weighed before and how much it weighs now.
3. Press Compress PDF and download and save the lighter file.

What to expect

How much it shrinks depends on the file:

• PDFs created by Word or by a scanner usually shrink quite a lot.
• Files that were already optimized barely change.
• If the file cannot be reduced, the tool tells you and downloads nothing, so you do not end up with a copy identical to the original.

Do I lose quality?

No. This tool reorders and cleans the file internally, but it does not lower the quality of the text or the images. That is why the reduction has a limit: if you need to cut the weight much more, you will have to change the source of the file (for example, scan at a lower resolution).

Is my file uploaded to the internet?

No. The whole process happens inside your browser, on your own computer. That matters when the PDF contains personal data or work information.

If it is still too heavy

• Split the document into parts with Split PDF and send several emails.
• If the weight comes from photos, shrink them first with Resize image or Compress image and create the PDF again.
• Share the file with a link from your cloud storage instead of attaching it.

Limits and plans

Free, with ads, up to 20 MB per file. With Pro you compress with no size limit, several at a time, and download them as a ZIP.