Papiral
PixelForge
TabularMethod 1: Using Papiral (fastest, free, no software)
The easiest way to compress one or many PDFs in your browser.
- 1Go to the Compress PDF tool on Papiral.
- 2Upload your PDF (or a ZIP of multiple PDFs).
- 3Click Process — Papiral re-serializes the PDF structure for smaller output.
- 4Download the compressed PDF or ZIP.
Papiral's compression is lossless — it doesn't touch embedded images, so quality is fully preserved.
Method 2: Ghostscript (command line, deeper compression)
Ghostscript can re-encode embedded images, achieving larger reductions for image-heavy PDFs.
- 1Install Ghostscript: brew install ghostscript (Mac) or apt install ghostscript (Linux).
- 2Run the compression command below.
- 3Find your compressed file at output.pdf.
bash
gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
-dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 \
-dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook \
-dNOPAUSE -dBATCH \
-sOutputFile=output.pdf \
input.pdfUse /screen for maximum compression (lowest quality), /ebook for balanced, /printer for high quality.
Method 3: Python with pikepdf
- 1Install pikepdf: pip install pikepdf
- 2Use the script below to compress and save.
python
import pikepdf
with pikepdf.open("input.pdf") as pdf:
pdf.save("output.pdf", compress_streams=True)Frequently asked questions
How much can I expect to reduce a PDF's size?
It depends on the PDF content. Lossless structure compression (like Papiral uses) typically reduces size by 5–30% on complex documents. Ghostscript with image re-encoding can achieve much larger reductions for image-heavy PDFs, at the cost of some image quality.
Does PDF compression affect text readability?
Papiral's lossless compression never affects text. Ghostscript's image re-encoding may slightly reduce image quality at aggressive settings, but text is always preserved.
Ready to try the fastest method?
Reduce PDF file size by re-saving with optimized structure. No quality settings required — just smaller files.
Compress PDF — free