Drop PDFs to compress to 400 KBAdd PDFs to compress to 400 KB
Fit a PDF under 400 KB with the gentlest settings that work.
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Your files never leave your deviceAbout this tool
A PDF to 400 KB compressor that keeps the text sharp
Each PDF is made at most 400 KB, with the gentlest settings that fit. A 3.2 MB scanned form came out at 363 KB, its pictures at 225 dpi at quality 80. 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 400 KB means for a PDF
400 KB is enough for a short document with its photographs at screen quality. a form scanned at 300 dpi (3.2 MB) comes out at 363 KB, its pictures at 225 dpi and quality 80; a phone photo on three A4 pages (5.2 MB) comes out at 306 KB, its pictures at 150 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.
Here our scanned form kept 225 dpi at quality 80, and the phone photo PDF 150 dpi at quality 85: sharp enough that a page looks clean at full size on a laptop.
How a PDF reaches 400 KB
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 400 KB our phone photo PDF settled on 150 dpi at quality 85, and the scanned form on 225 dpi at quality 80.
400 KB here means 400,000 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 400 KB PDF
If the picture on the page is the point, as with a photograph you want to read details from, ask for a bigger limit or use the Small level. A size limit is about the whole file, not about each picture.
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 400 KB
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 does a scan look like at 400 KB?
Our scanned form came to 363 KB at 225 dpi at quality 80, so small print stays crisp when you zoom in on a screen, and a printed page looks right.
Is it better to fit 400 KB or to use the Smaller level?
Fit the limit if one is set; otherwise use a level. The level gives every PDF the same settings, the limit gives each PDF the gentlest settings that fit, so a short PDF gets more quality for the same size.
Does the order of pages change when a PDF is compressed to 400 KB?
No. Pages, bookmarks and links stay as they were, in the same order. Only the pictures on the pages are saved again.
Compress a PDF to a size
These pages open Compress PDF with the size already set.
Text stays sharp.Under 400 KB
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.