Compress PDF to 5 MB or below
Shrink a big scan or photo-heavy PDF to below 5 MB. If it is already small enough, you keep your original. Free, private, and nothing is uploaded.
Shrink a big scan or photo-heavy PDF to below 5 MB. If it is already small enough, you keep your original. Free, private, and nothing is uploaded.
To compress a PDF to 5 MB, SafeResize turns the pages into lighter pictures until the file is 5,000,000 bytes or less, which is under 5 MB whether a website counts 1 MB as 1,000,000 or 1,048,576 bytes.
| 5 MB in bytes | 5,000,000 bytes, or 5,242,880 bytes when 1 MB is counted as 1,024 KB, as Windows does |
|---|---|
| 5 MB in KB | 5,000 KB, or 5,120 KB as Windows counts |
| The PDF you download | 5,000,000 bytes or less, so both counts accept it. Windows shows it as 4.8 MB or less. |
| Each page gets, shared evenly | About 500 KB with 10 pages, or 125 KB with 40 |
| Sharpness of each page | 150 DPI first, then 120, 96, 72, 56 and 45 DPI, stopping at the first that fits |
At 5 MB a PDF can hold a lot: dozens of black and white pages, or many colour pages at a good sharpness. If yours is over 5 MB, it is most likely a scan saved at a very high sharpness, or a document with large photos inside.
The tool below opens with 5 MB filled in. If your PDF is already under the limit, SafeResize says so and you keep your original file, with its selectable text unchanged. That is better than shrinking a file that does not need it.
It depends on the pages. A page of printed text in black and white can be very small, while a colour photo page can take several hundred KB. Five MB shared over ten pages is 500 KB a page, which is generous.
No. Every page keeps its page size and its place. Only the sharpness of the picture on each page changes.
On Windows, yes. Some websites count 5,000 KB. The file is kept under 5,000,000 bytes, so it passes both.
Add the PDF on this page: 5 MB is already filled in. Press "Make it this size", and the tool lowers the sharpness only as far as it must. If the PDF is already below 5 MB, it says so and you keep your original. Still too big? Tick "Black & white", or send fewer pages.