Compress PDF to 200KB — Text Stays Text, Free & Private

200 KB is a common cap for resumes, cover letters and supporting documents on job and admission portals. At this size most documents saved from Word or Google Docs fit with their text untouched. The tool first trims the embedded fonts and removes unused data, which changes nothing on the page; in the 14 real government PDFs where the fonts could be trimmed, that alone cut the size by a median of 58%. Then, if needed, it recompresses only the photos inside.

For scans, 200 KB is roomy: our simulated three-page grayscale and two-page colour scans stayed fully readable at this size (98.6% to 100% of words recognised by OCR).

The honest limits. PDFs with a password or with security restrictions are left alone, because compressing them would save them without that protection. A digitally signed PDF can be compressed, but any change to the file makes the signature show as invalid; the tool warns you, and if the signature matters, upload the original. In fillable forms the fonts are kept whole, because whatever someone types later needs every letter. When the target is smaller than the text and fonts alone, the pages do become images. The result then says "pages as images", and the text, links, bookmarks and form fields are not kept; at very small sizes, check that small text is still readable. Pictures in print colours (CMYK) and black-and-white fax-style scans are not recompressed yet, so PDFs made of them reach small targets only as page images. Long documents take longer: a 141-page manual took between 10 and 45 seconds on a laptop. Everything runs in your browser, so the PDF is never uploaded.