Compress PDF to 200 KB | Free, Nothing Uploaded

200 KB is the limit application portals ask for most often: job and university applications, visa and permit forms, anywhere a scanned document is attached rather than emailed. This page opens on that limit. Choose the PDF and press Compress; it works through settings from the gentlest to the harshest and keeps the gentlest one that brings the file under 200 KB.

At 200 KB there is room for a page or two of scan at a quality that still looks like the original, or a single page that keeps its fine print. The pictures in the file are what get re-saved; its text and fonts are copied across untouched, so a PDF that was typed rather than scanned keeps its sharp, selectable text however small the file gets.

If the form also wants several documents in one file, put them together first with Merge PDF and compress the result: one squeeze over the whole file shares the 200 KB better than compressing each part and hoping the sum fits.

How to use it

Choose your PDF. It is read in this tab and never uploaded.
Leave the size this page opened on, or pick another under Smaller than.
Press Compress: the gentlest setting that gets under the size is found for you.
Download the result, which is already named as the compressed copy.

Questions

How many pages can fit in 200 KB?

It depends on what is on them. Pages of typed text take a few kilobytes each and dozens fit. Scanned pages are pictures, and two or three at an ordinary resolution usually fit with room to keep them readable. Photographs take the most, and one or two is the practical limit.

Should I compress each document and then merge them?

Merge first, then compress. Compressing the merged file finds one setting for all of it, which spends the 200 KB where the pictures are; compressing the parts separately has to guess each part's share and usually ends over or needlessly blurry.

The form says 200 KB. Is that 200,000 bytes or 204,800?

Forms differ, and many do not say. This page aims under 200 × 1024 = 204,800 bytes; to be safe against a form that counts 200,000, choose 150 KB under Smaller than, which costs very little in quality.

Is my PDF uploaded to do this?

No. It is read and rebuilt in this tab, by WebAssembly and your browser's own image encoder, and the page is served with a rule that forbids it from opening a connection anywhere. Turn the network off after the page loads and it works the same, which is the way to check rather than take it on trust.

What if it cannot get small enough?

It says so, with the smallest size it reached and why. Only the pictures inside a PDF can be squeezed; its text, fonts and structure are already compressed, so a file that is mostly those has a floor. Below that the way down is fewer pages: Split PDF takes out the ones the form does not need.

200 KB in practice

What the file is	What to expect
Typed text, any length	Usually under 200 KB already, or close
One or two scanned pages	Fits, at a setting that keeps them sharp
Three to five scanned pages	Fits at a harsher setting; check the fine print
Phone photos made into a PDF	One or two fit, scaled down
Several documents for one upload	Merge first, then compress once

Other sizes

The same tool opened on another limit. Any of them will aim at any size once you are there.

Your data stays on your device

Everything above runs inside your browser as WebAssembly compiled from Rust. Nothing you type is uploaded, logged or stored on a server. You can load this page once, go offline, and it still works.

This page makes no requests at all, to anywhere. That is not a promise in the copy: it is a Content-Security-Policy header your browser enforces, and connect-src on it is none. Open the network tab and watch nothing happen.