Compress PDF to 500KB

Compress PDF to 500KB without visible quality loss

No compression is free, but 500 KB often leaves enough room for it to go unnoticed. The tool tries 150 DPI first, then 120, 100 and 72 DPI, and hands you the first version under the target — never a smaller, blurrier one than necessary. On screen and on an A4 printout, 150 DPI images look close to the originals; the difference shows mainly when you zoom into photos.

To see it for yourself, open “Compare with original” on the result and zoom into a photo and a block of text.

Why is the result close to 500 KB instead of much smaller?

Because 500 KB is the goal, not a starting point for squeezing further. A PDF that fits at 150 DPI is left at 150 DPI. If you would rather have the smallest file regardless of the limit, clear Target size and choose Smaller, or Smallest if selectable text does not matter.

A text-only PDF over 500 KB

A PDF exported from Word or Google Docs with no pictures is mostly text and embedded fonts. Neither is recompressed here, so the tool returns such a file unchanged and says it found no images to compress. Re-exporting from the app that made it, or removing unneeded pages there, is the way to make it smaller.