Compress a PDF to 1 MB

For application portals that cap documents at 1 MB. Drop a scanned PDF, or photos of the pages, and get one PDF under the limit, made on your device.

Drop a PDF, or photos to make one

or paste it with ⌘V — anywhere on this page

From your gallery or camera

One PDF, or up to 20 photos · nothing is uploaded

Full-size result
Never stored
No watermark
No sign-up

How to do it

1Drop the PDFA scan, a phone-scanned document or a PDF with photos in it, up to 20 pages.
2Keep colour, or go black & white1 MB leaves room for colour on most documents; black & white sharpens small text.
3Download the PDFUnder 1,000,000 bytes, measured on the whole finished file.

Where 1 MB limits come from

Application portals store a lot of documents, so they cap each upload. 1 MB and 2 MB are common caps on job sites, university and scholarship applications, visa and immigration portals, and insurance and benefit claims, alongside smaller ones for photos. The rule on the page is usually one line, "PDF, maximum 1 MB", and the upload fails silently or with a vague error if the file is even slightly over.

A scanned document from a phone app can be several megabytes a page. A ten-page application pack can be 20 MB or more. Getting that under 1 MB without making it unreadable is what this page does.

How it gets there

Every page is drawn at 150 dpi, which is sharp enough to read normal type comfortably: 10-point text comes out about 21 pixels tall. The pages are saved as JPEGs and the PDF is rebuilt, then the finished file is measured against 1,000,000 bytes. The quality moves up or down until the file is the best it can be under the limit, in seven or eight rounds.

Only if the lowest quality is still over 1 MB does the resolution drop, to 110 dpi, then 90, 72, 60 and 50. With a 1 MB limit, that rarely happens unless the document has many pages of photos. The result shows the resolution and quality it settled on, so you can judge it before uploading.

The limit, read safely

1 MB means 1,000,000 bytes to some sites and 1,048,576 to others, a difference of nearly 5%. The tool aims under the smaller number, so the file passes everywhere. The guide to KB and KiB explains why the two counts exist.

Colour or black & white

With 1 MB to work with, colour is usually fine, and it keeps seals, stamps, logos and photos on the document looking right. Switch to Black & white for long documents of printed text, or when the result had to drop below 150 dpi: grayscale JPEGs came out 10% to 23% smaller than colour at the same quality in our tests, room that goes back into sharper text.

Several documents, one file

Many portals want everything in one PDF: a CV, a cover letter, certificates. If you have the pages as photos, pick them together, in order, and each becomes a page. If you have separate PDFs, combine them first in your PDF reader, then compress the combined file here so the whole thing is measured against the limit.

Before you upload

Open the result and zoom in on the smallest print. Check the page count. Check the size in bytes in your file's properties. And keep your original: the compressed file's text is part of the page images, so it can't be searched or copied.

For tighter limits, see compress a PDF to 200 KB, and the full guide to fitting a PDF under a limit.

Questions people ask

How do I make a PDF smaller than 1 MB?

Drop it into the tool above and press Make the PDF. Each page is redrawn as an image at 150 dpi, saved as a JPEG, and the whole PDF is rebuilt and measured. The JPEG quality is adjusted until the file is as good as it can be under 1,000,000 bytes; only if that is impossible does the resolution step down.

Is 1 MB 1,000,000 bytes or 1,048,576?

Sites differ. The tool keeps the file under 1,000,000 bytes, so it passes whichever way the portal counts.

How many pages fit in 1 MB?

It depends on the pages. A page of printed text on white paper takes far less than a page of photos, so a text document fits many more pages. In our test, three full-page photos came to 195 KB at 150 dpi, so 1 MB is roomy for most documents. The result shows the size, resolution and quality you got.

Will my PDF still look good?

At 1 MB most documents keep 150 dpi and good JPEG quality, which reads like the original on screen. The text becomes part of the page image, so it can no longer be selected; keep your original file.

Is my document uploaded?

No. The PDF is opened, redrawn and saved in your browser, on your own device.