Compress PDF Online — Honest Browser Compression | nopa

PDF

Compress a PDF

Upload a PDF and try to shrink the file size — works best when the PDF has many images.

Try it now — no account needed

🔒 Your file stays on this device — processing runs in your browser.

Save and continue on the desktop

Download or copy your result here first. Continue in nopa to save to Files or use more features.

  • Merge, split, rotate and convert PDF files.
  • Results saved to Files automatically
  • Every tool in one place — no new tabs
Open the free desktop

After you download — continue on the desktop for Files or the full app.

What compression means here

Every page is redrawn at 1.2× and saved as a JPEG at 72% quality, then the document is rebuilt from those images. On a 30 MB scan of a signed contract that routinely cuts the file to a few megabytes with no visible difference on screen, because the pages were photographs to begin with.

The trade you are making

Once a page has been redrawn, its text is part of a picture. You cannot select a sentence, search for a name, or copy a paragraph out, and screen readers have nothing left to read. Links and form fields do not survive either. For a scanned document that never had a text layer you lose nothing at all; for a report exported from a word processor, keep the original and send that instead.

When nothing happens on purpose

Rasterizing a text or vector PDF often produces a bigger file than it started with. If the rebuilt version is not at least 5% smaller, nopa throws it away and hands your original back untouched rather than pretending. Slide decks exported straight from presentation software and PDFs that were already run through a compressor tend to land in exactly that category.

Limitations

Up to 200 pages per run, and up to 100 MB on desktop or 50 MB on a phone. Rendering happens one page at a time inside the tab, so a long scan takes real seconds and warms up a phone — leave the tab in the foreground until it finishes.

More PDF tools

Questions

Will every PDF get smaller?

No. Text-only or already compressed PDFs may stay about the same size — and when the result would not be at least 5% smaller, you get your original file back rather than a worse one.

Will the text still be selectable afterwards?

No. Pages are re-rendered as images, so selecting, searching, and copying text stops working. That is the price of this kind of compression — if you need the text layer, do not compress the file.

What types of PDFs compress best?

Scans and photo-heavy documents, where the pages were already images. Those routinely drop by most of their size with no visible change on screen.

Are my PDFs uploaded?

Processing runs in your browser — your files stay on your device.