Drop PDFs to compress to 2 MBAdd PDFs to compress to 2 MB
Fit a PDF under 2 MB with the gentlest settings that work.
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Your files never leave your deviceAbout this tool
A PDF to 2 MB compressor that keeps the text sharp
Each PDF is made at most 2 MB, with the gentlest settings that fit. A 3.2 MB scanned form came out at 1 MB, its pictures at 300 dpi at quality 85. If it can’t get that small at a readable quality, you get the smallest copy and a note. It stays on your device.
What 2 MB means for a PDF
2 MB is room for a proper document with photographs. a form scanned at 300 dpi (3.2 MB) comes out at 1 MB, its pictures at 300 dpi and quality 85; a phone photo on three A4 pages (5.2 MB) comes out at 1.2 MB, its pictures at 300 dpi and quality 85; a report with a logo, a chart, a photo and a signature (4.7 MB) comes out at 260 KB, its pictures at 300 dpi and quality 85.
Under 2 MB our scanned form kept 300 dpi at quality 85 and the phone photo PDF 300 dpi at quality 85, so little is given up that you would see.
How a PDF reaches 2 MB
Compress PDF tries the gentlest settings first and goes down a step at a time until the file fits: pictures at up to 300 dpi and high quality, then lower. Text and drawings are never touched. For 2 MB our phone photo PDF settled on 300 dpi at quality 85, and the scanned form on 300 dpi at quality 85.
2 MB here means 2,000,000 bytes, the stricter way to read it, so a file that passes here passes a limit counted in KiB too. The floor is 72 dpi at quality 30: below that pictures stop being readable, so the PDF stays bigger than the limit and says so.
Before you send a 2 MB PDF
A PDF already under 2 MB comes back with its pictures untouched; only its packing changes. If it still feels heavy, the limit is not what is holding it back: try a level, or a smaller limit.
How it works
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Step 1:Add your PDFs
Drop them in or choose them from your device. Each one shows its first page.
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Step 2:Compress to 2 MB
The limit is already set in the panel. Press Compress when you’re ready; nothing changes before that.
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Step 3:Check the size and save
Each PDF shows the size it reached. Save one file, or all of them as a .zip.
Questions, answered
What happens to a PDF that is already under 2 MB?
Its pictures are left as they are, and only the way the file is packed changes, if that helps: a 30-page text report (87.1 KB) already fits, so only its packing changes, to 23 KB. Nothing is made smaller than it needs to be.
Is 2 MB enough for a scanned book chapter?
Our form scanned at 300 dpi costs about 507 KB a page on the Small level and 67 KB on Smaller, so 2 MB holds about 3 pages of it at 300 dpi, or about 25 at 150. Your pages will differ; the row shows the size each PDF reached.
Can I use a 2 MB PDF for printing?
If the PDF fits at a high resolution, yes. Our phone photo PDF kept 300 dpi at quality 85, which prints cleanly at A4. The row tells you what each PDF reached, and says so when the limit could not be met.
Compress a PDF to a size
These pages open Compress PDF with the size already set.
Text stays sharp.Under 2 MB
Compress by
We use the gentlest settings that fit. If a PDF can’t get that small at a quality you can read, you get the smallest we can make, and it says so.
What changes
Only pictures change: they come down to the size they’re shown at and are saved again. Text, vector drawings, links, bookmarks and form fields stay exactly as they are. The file is repacked too, so even a PDF without pictures can get smaller. Page thumbnails go, and so does the editing data some design apps keep inside a PDF: a PDF saved from Illustrator can’t be opened again as an editable Illustrator file.
PDFs with a password or a digital signature are left as they are: compressing them would remove the protection or break the signature.