Drop PDFs to compress to 5 MBAdd PDFs to compress to 5 MB
Fit a PDF under 5 MB with the gentlest settings that work.
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Your files never leave your deviceAbout this tool
A PDF to 5 MB compressor that keeps the text sharp
Each PDF is made at most 5 MB, with the gentlest settings that fit. A 3.2 MB scanned form already fits and keeps its pictures. 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 5 MB means for a PDF
5 MB is a generous limit; most PDFs that go over it carry large photographs or full-page scans. 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 form scanned at 300 dpi (3.2 MB) already fits and stays as it is; a report with a logo, a chart, a photo and a signature (4.7 MB) already fits and stays as it is.
A scan of many pages is the usual case: the more pages, the lower the resolution that fits. Our a report with a logo, a chart, a photo and a signature settled on untouched.
How a PDF reaches 5 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 5 MB our phone photo PDF settled on 300 dpi at quality 85, and the scanned form on its pictures left alone.
5 MB here means 5,000,000 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 5 MB PDF
When the PDF is much larger than 5 MB, the Smaller level is a good first try. The size search finds the same settings too, but a level is quicker on a big file because it goes over the pictures once.
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 5 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 if my PDF is much bigger than 5 MB?
The pictures are what make a PDF large, and the search brings them down only as far as they need to. a phone photo on three A4 pages that took 5.2 MB fitted 5 MB with its pictures at 300 dpi at quality 85, at 1.2 MB. For a bigger file the row shows the size it reached, and says when the limit can’t be met at a readable quality.
Why not just use a level instead of a limit of 5 MB?
A limit fits each file to its own size and a level treats every file alike. If you only know the limit, set it; if you are happy with the look of one level, use that, because it is faster on large files.
Will a 5 MB limit keep photos sharp?
In our test the phone photo PDF kept 300 dpi at quality 85, which looks sharp on a screen and prints well. A PDF of a hundred pages of photographs would have to go lower.
Compress a PDF to a size
These pages open Compress PDF with the size already set.
Text stays sharp.Under 5 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.