Compress scanned PDF to a target size
Scanned PDFs are mostly photos of paper — they compress like images. This page opens the tool at 1 MB; lower the target if you need a tighter cap.
For any other KB/MB cap, use the main PDF target size tool.
Loading tool…
About this use case
Because each page is effectively a bitmap, scanned documents respond well to JPEG quality tuning, sometimes more than text-native PDFs.
Your scans stay on-device: nothing is sent to us during the compression pass.
How to use
- Upload the scanned PDF exported from your scanner or phone app.
- Pick a realistic target (1 MB here; try 500 KB for stricter sites).
- Run compression and read the resulting file size label.
- Download when the output meets your portal or archive plan.
FAQ
- How do I compress PDF to 500KB?
- Jump to the 500 KB preset page under Related PDF sizes, or change KB/MB fields after loading this tool.
- Why can't some PDFs reach the target size?
- Color scans at 300 DPI consume a lot of pixels. The tool can scale pages down, but extremely aggressive targets may still be unreachable in one pass.
- Is my PDF stored?
- No server-side copy is created.
- How does PDF compression work?
- Scanned pages are re-rendered and saved as JPEG inside a fresh PDF, which is how byte size is driven toward your goal.
- Will OCR text disappear?
- Invisible OCR text layers may be lost after full rasterization. Keep an OCR’d master if you rely on search inside the PDF.
Related PDF sizes
Related PDF scenarios
Related tools
- Compress PDF to Exact Size
Upload a PDF, pick a target file size (KB or MB), and download a smaller PDF tuned toward that goal. Runs in your browser with pdf.js and pdf-lib.
- Compress image to target size (KB)
Need photos under a byte limit instead? Use the image compressor with the same target-size workflow.