Compress PDF to 1MB

How the tool gets your PDF under 1MB

• First it tries a lossless clean-up. If that's enough, your PDF keeps selectable, searchable text.
• If not, it re-renders each page as an image, starting at high resolution and stepping down only until the file fits.
• If the result has plenty of room to spare, it tries once more at a higher resolution, so you get the sharpest version that still fits.

We tested it: three PDFs to 1 MB

Here's what this page produced from three real test PDFs:

The 8-page scan stayed sharp on screen at 1 MB. In our tests, scanned pages stay comfortably readable down to about 40 KB per page, so 1 MB can hold roughly 20–25 scanned pages if you accept slightly softer text.

Files already under the target are returned unchanged, so you never lose quality for nothing.

What fits in 1MB

A typed document of dozens of pages usually fits easily without any loss. For scans, our 8-page test document fit in 894KB and stayed sharp, and text remains readable down to about 40KB per page, so 1MB can hold around 20–25 scanned pages if you accept slightly softer text. Longer scans may need to be split into parts.

If it still won't fit

• Remove pages the form doesn't need — blank pages and duplicate copies are common.
• Split the document into separate files if the portal allows multiple uploads.
• Re-scan in black and white or greyscale at 150 DPI instead of colour at 300 DPI.