Why compress a PDF?
- To get past a 10 MB email attachment limit.
- To upload a scan to a portal that caps file size.
- To send a heavy report over a slow connection without waiting.
- To save storage on a phone or laptop full of scanned receipts.
What to expect
Most PDFs that are big are big because of embedded images — scans of paper documents, screenshots dropped into a report, photo-heavy brochures. Formatly downsamples those images to 150 DPI and re-encodes them as JPEG at quality ~75. That's enough resolution for a Retina-class laptop screen and acceptable for letter or A4 printing; for magazine-quality print, keep the original. Text objects, vectors, and metadata pass through unchanged, so a searchable PDF stays searchable, hyperlinks still work, and form fields still fill.
Typical savings: 70-85% on scan-heavy PDFs, 20-40% on text-heavy reports, and 0% on PDFs that were already optimized — in that last case Formatly returns the original unchanged rather than make the file bigger.
How it works
- Open the converter. Go to the Formatly converter — no signup required.
- Drop your PDF files. Drag and drop one or more PDFs into the upload box (up to five files, 20 MB each).
- Choose Compressed PDF. Pick Compressed PDF (smaller file) from the output dropdown. Under the hood we run Ghostscript's
/ebookpreset — the universal sweet spot for "smaller, still readable." - Convert and download. Click Convert. Each file comes back with a
-compressedsuffix. If a PDF was already optimized, you get the original back — no upsized surprises.
Good for
- Anyone emailing a scanned contract that's just barely too big.
- Job seekers attaching a portfolio PDF to an application form with a tight cap.
- Students uploading a multi-page assignment to a learning-management system.
- Anyone shrinking a backlog of scanned receipts for tax storage.
FAQ
How much smaller will my PDF get? It depends on what's in the PDF. Scanned PDFs (where every page is essentially a photo) typically shrink 70-85% because the images get downsampled to 150 DPI and re-encoded as JPEG. Text-heavy PDFs already compress well, so the win is smaller — usually 20-40%. If a PDF is already optimized, we hand back the original unchanged rather than make it bigger.
Will the compressed PDF still look good? For screen reading, yes — we use Ghostscript's /ebook preset, which targets 150 DPI image quality (roughly what a Retina laptop screen shows). For print at letter or A4 it's still acceptable. For high-quality print (magazine, photo book) the recompression artifacts may show — keep the original for print masters.
Will text in my PDF stay searchable? Yes. Compression only touches embedded images; text objects pass through unchanged. If your PDF was searchable before, the compressed copy is searchable too.
Why is my PDF the same size after compression? Probably already optimized. Many PDFs exported from Word, Pages, or modern browsers are well-compressed out of the gate, so there's nothing left to squeeze. We detect this and return the original unchanged rather than risk producing a larger file.
Is the PDF compressor free? Yes. No signup, no watermark, no payment. Free for personal and commercial use, up to five 20 MB files per batch. Need more aggressive compression? A "screen" preset for email-only PDFs is coming — drop a note via the contact page if you want it sooner.
Related
- PDF → DOCX → edit the content instead of just shrinking it
- PDF → Text (OCR) → pull editable text out of a scan
- DOCX → PDF → the other direction
- Why your scanned PDF looks bad →
- Shrinking images, honestly — lossy vs lossless →
- All supported formats →