Compress PDF
Shrink your PDF files without destroying them. BentoPDF offers two distinct compression algorithms -- one for text-heavy documents, another for photo-heavy scans -- so you get meaningful size reduction regardless of what your PDF contains.
How It Works
- Upload one or more PDFs by clicking the drop zone or dragging files in.
- Select a Compression Algorithm -- Condense or Photon.
- Pick a Compression Level from Light to Extreme.
- Optionally toggle Convert to Grayscale or expand Custom Settings for fine-grained control.
- Click Compress PDF. For multiple files, you get a single ZIP download.
Compression Algorithms
Condense (Recommended)
The default algorithm. It removes dead weight from the PDF structure, recompresses images at a target DPI, subsets fonts to strip unused glyphs, and removes embedded thumbnails. The PDF stays fully functional -- text remains selectable, links keep working.
Condense requires the PyMuPDF WASM engine.
Photon (For Photo-Heavy PDFs)
Photon renders each page to a JPEG image and reassembles them into a new PDF. This works well for scanned documents or image-heavy files where Condense cannot squeeze much out. The trade-off is that text becomes non-selectable and hyperlinks stop working.
Compression Levels
| Level | Image Quality | DPI Target | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Light | 90% | 150 | Preserving visual quality |
| Balanced | 75% | 96 | Everyday documents |
| Aggressive | 50% | 72 | Email attachments, web uploads |
| Extreme | 30% | 60 | Maximum size reduction |
Custom Settings
Expand the Custom Settings panel to override preset values:
- Output Quality (1-100%) -- JPEG quality for recompressed images
- Resize Images To (DPI) -- target resolution for downsampled images
- Only Process Above (DPI) -- images below this threshold are left untouched
- Remove metadata -- strips document info fields
- Subset fonts -- removes unused glyphs from embedded fonts
- Remove embedded thumbnails -- drops preview images stored inside the PDF
Use Cases
- Bringing a 50 MB report under an email attachment limit
- Optimizing marketing PDFs for faster website downloads
- Archiving large document sets where storage costs matter
- Preparing scanned contracts for a document management system
- Reducing mobile data usage when sharing PDFs over messaging apps
Tips
- Start with Balanced. If the result is still too large, step up to Aggressive before trying Extreme.
- Use Photon only when Condense produces minimal savings -- it permanently removes text selection.
- The grayscale toggle alone can cut file size substantially for color-heavy documents.
Related Tools
- Linearize PDF -- optimize the compressed PDF for fast web viewing
- Rasterize PDF -- convert pages to images at a specific DPI
- Repair PDF -- fix a PDF that broke during compression elsewhere
- Remove Metadata -- strip hidden data for privacy