Compress PDF to 500 KB
PDFDrop a PDF and get it back under 500 KB, at the best quality that fits — compressed on your device.
500 KB is a common cap on job, school and public-service portals — for a CV with a photo, a scanned reference, a short report with pictures. Drop the PDF in; the limit is set, and the tool keeps the best quality that fits under it.
It shrinks the pictures first and keeps the text, links and form fields as they are, trying 300, 200, 150 and 100 pixels per inch in turn. Most documents of a few pages stop there. A long scan may not: in Chrome, 25 scanned pages (9.8 MB) came under 500 KB only with the pages drawn as pictures at 60 pixels per inch, in about 17 seconds — readable, but the text can no longer be selected; in Safari, whose encoder makes larger pictures, the same pages stayed over, at 550 KB, and the tool said so. Untick flattening if the text has to stay text; you then get the smallest the pictures alone can make, and the card says how far over it is. A PDF already under 500 KB is left as it is.
Need a different limit? PDF Compressor takes any target, in KB or MB — whatever the form asks for.
Why do it here
100% private
Your PDF files are processed locally and never uploaded.
Instant
No upload or download wait — it runs at the speed of your device.
Free to start
Use it free every day; go Pro for unlimited runs.
No install
Works in any modern browser. No sign-up to begin.
How it works
- 1Drop your PDF
One or several. Each is compressed in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
- 2Press Compress to 500 KB
Pictures first, text kept; pages flattened only if that is the only way and you allow it.
- 3Download
Under 500 KB, with the step it took — or the smallest it could make, and why, if nothing fits.
Frequently asked questions
Why can my long scan no longer be searched after compressing?
Twenty-odd scanned pages only fit in 500 KB as pictures drawn at a low resolution (and in Safari not even then), and a picture of a page has no text to select. If the text matters more than the size, untick Flatten the pages; or split the PDF and upload it in parts.
Is it better to split the PDF than to squeeze it?
Often, when a portal allows several files: two 250 KB halves keep twice the detail of one 500 KB whole. Split PDF does that in your browser too.
Is 500 KB counted as 500,000 bytes?
Yes — the way upload forms almost always count. A file under 500,000 bytes is also under a form that counts 512,000.
What if my PDF is already smaller than 500 KB?
Then it is left exactly as it is, and the tool tells you there was nothing to do — re-compressing would only lose quality.
Is my CV uploaded to be compressed?
No. The PDF is compressed in your own browser and saved to your device. Nothing about it reaches a server.