Pick your limit
| Limit | Typical use | Level to start with |
|---|---|---|
| 100 KB | One certificate or ID page on a state portal | Smaller |
| 200 KB | Scholarship documents | Smaller |
| 300 KB | Scanned ID for UPSC, Indian e-Visa, PAN | Balanced for one page, Smaller for more |
| 500 KB | Certificates for recruitment and admissions | Balanced up to two pages, Smaller for more |
| 1 MB | Business proofs, multi-page scans | Balanced |
| 2 MB | CVs, immigration and council uploads | Balanced |
Each page lists the portals that use that limit, with a link to the official requirement, and what to do when the file still does not fit.
How the levels map to size
The tool has three levels. They differ in one thing: the resolution images are resampled to. Text, vector drawings and form fields are never touched.
- Smaller: images at 72 dpi. A scanned A4 page comes out at roughly 30 to 90 KB. Measured: a two-page phone scan of an expense form, 885 KB to 51 KB; one dense page of contract text scanned at 300 dpi, 1.2 MB to 90 KB.
- Balanced: images at 150 dpi. About three times Smaller, 80 to 250 KB per page: the same files came to 153 KB and 246 KB. Looks the same as the original on a screen.
- Sharper: images at 300 dpi. For files that will be printed. Rarely under a portal limit, and a file already at 300 dpi is reported as already small.
Those numbers are for scans, where the whole page is one photo. Phone scanner apps save each page as its photo at 72 dpi on a page 20 inches wide, which no level would resample; the tool fits such pages to A4 first, so the numbers above hold for them too. A PDF exported from Word or Google Docs is text plus a logo, and it is small at every level; if such a file is large, the weight is in embedded fonts or an attached file, and the fix is to export it again from the source.
Why there is no "compress to exactly X" button
Compression cannot promise a size. The output depends on how many image pages the file has and what is on them; a photo of a dense form compresses less than a photo of a letter. What the tool can do is show the size for a level immediately, and recompress the whole list when you switch levels, so you compare two results in a few seconds. Start at the level suggested for your limit, and step down if it is over.
Email limits
Mail servers count the whole message, attachments included. Gmail allows 25 MB for a personal account and turns larger attachments into a Drive link. Outlook.com allows 25 MB per attachment. Corporate servers often stop at 10 MB. For a scanned contract that bounces, the Balanced level is usually enough.
When compression is not the answer
- The limit is per document and your file is a bundle. Split it. Print the pages that are asked for to a new PDF, then compress that.
- The file is a colour scan of a black-and-white page. Rescan in greyscale or black and white at 150 dpi. The result is smaller than any compression of the colour scan, and cleaner.
- The file is digitally signed. Compression rewrites the PDF and breaks the signature. Upload the signed original if the portal checks signatures; it is usually small already.
- The portal wants a JPEG. For a single page, export the image directly from the scanner app rather than wrapping it in a PDF.
Whatever the limit, the file never leaves your device: the compression engine runs in your browser, and nothing is stored once the page is closed.
Ready? Drop your PDF into the tool at the top of this page.
Compressed on your device, never uploaded. No sign-up.
Size limits on this page were checked on .