PDF Compressor
Commercial use OK
380+ models
No watermark
No sign-up needed
Model:
+ GPT-5, Claude, Gemini
Shrink a PDF without breaking it. Three Ghostscript quality presets: Screen (smallest, 72 DPI), eBook (balanced, 150 DPI), Print (largest, 300 DPI). Image-heavy PDFs typically lose 40-75% of their size. Estimated output shows live before you submit.
Compressed PDF ready
What people compress PDFs for
Email attachments
Outlook + Gmail limit attachments to 20-25 MB. Shrink an image-heavy proposal to fit.
Government portals
Tax, visa, and court e-filing portals cap uploads at 5-10 MB — Screen preset typically fits.
Archive storage
Cut a 5 GB folder of scanned receipts to 1-2 GB for long-term storage.
Website download
Ship a whitepaper 60% smaller so mobile visitors on metered data don't bail.
How to compress a PDF in 4 steps
- Upload your PDF. We read file size and page count locally so we can estimate savings before you submit.
- Pick a preset: Screen (~75% smaller, web), eBook (~45% smaller, sharing), or Print (~15% smaller, print-ready).
- Check the estimated output size. If the savings aren't enough, try a more aggressive preset.
- Click Compress. Ghostscript downsamples images, subsets fonts, and linearizes the PDF. Download the result — the actual saving is reported at the top.
Free.ai vs. Adobe Acrobat Pro vs. Smallpdf
| Free.ai | Adobe Acrobat Pro | Smallpdf | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free | $19.99/mo | $9/mo |
| 3 quality presets | |||
| Live output-size estimate | — | — | |
| Public API | Enterprise | Enterprise | |
| No sign-up required | — | — |
Advanced options
Result
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Compress PDFs without losing quality with free AI. Reduce file size instantly.
How to Use PDF Compressor
1
Enter your input
Type text, upload a file, or describe what you want. No account needed.
2
Click generate
Our AI processes your request in seconds using the best open-source models.
3
Download & share
Download, copy, or share your result. Free for personal and commercial use.
Use this tool via API
Automate this tool from your own code. OpenAI-compatible REST endpoint, Bearer-token auth, no extra SDK required. Token costs match the web interface.
curl -X POST https://api.free.ai/v1/pdf/extract/ \
-H "Authorization: Bearer sk-free-..." \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"file": "@document.pdf"}'Related Free AI Tools
PDF Compressor — FAQ
Shrink a PDF's file size without breaking it. We use Ghostscript to downgrade embedded images and subset fonts — three quality presets: Screen (72 DPI, smallest for web), eBook (150 DPI, balanced), Print (300 DPI, print-ready with minimal loss). Estimated output size is shown before you hit compress.
500 tokens for Screen, 750 for eBook, 1,000 for Print — flat per document up to 50 MB, no per-page charge. Free users get 2,500 daily tokens so most compressions are free. No per-MB scaling — compressing a 2 MB or 50 MB PDF costs the same.
Depends on the source. Image-heavy PDFs shrink 60-80% on Screen and 40-60% on eBook. Text-only PDFs that were already well-optimized shrink 5-15% because there's not much image data to downgrade. We show estimated output size based on the quality preset you pick.
Screen: 72 DPI color + grayscale images, subset fonts, linearize for web — designed for screen preview. eBook: 150 DPI, readable on phones and tablets. Print: 300 DPI, keeps vector paths lossless, preserves CMYK color — safe for professional printing.
Yes — Ghostscript resamples images to the target DPI (not below), subsets fonts to only the glyphs actually used, and keeps vector paths lossless. Screen preset can look soft on zoom past 200% because the pixel data is reduced; use eBook or Print for archival.
50 MB. For bigger PDFs (scanned books, construction blueprints), split first at /pdf/split/ into smaller batches, compress each, then merge at /pdf/merge/.
Compressing a signed PDF breaks the cryptographic signature because we re-serialize the file. Sign after compressing if the signature matters. For signed contracts that need to stay valid, use Print quality and skip recompressing — or compress the source first, then resign.
We refuse encrypted files — Ghostscript would silently output an empty PDF. Unlock first at /pdf/unlock/ if you own the document. Once compressed, you can re-protect at /pdf/protect/.
No. Compression runs on our own API server using Ghostscript + pikepdf locally. The file is written to a temp directory, compressed, and the source is deleted. The output stays on our CDN for 24 hours (7 days with active credits).
Free.ai is free. Adobe Acrobat Pro ($19.99/mo) runs a similar compression distiller. Smallpdf ($9/mo) uses their own cloud compression. We expose /v1/pdf/compress/ via a public API — the others gate theirs behind enterprise sales.
Not in one click yet — upload them one at a time. For automated batches, use the /v1/pdf/compress/ API endpoint and loop in your script. Each call bills the preset's flat cost separately.
Yes — POST multipart to /v1/pdf/compress/ with file + quality (screen / ebook / printer). Quote endpoint /v1/pdf/compress-quote/?quality=Q&input_size=B returns cost + estimated output size. Full curl recipe at /api/.
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