pdfpix

Compress PDF to 200 KB

or drop one here
Compression level
Target size
Choose a PDF file first.

A 200 KB cap means 204,800 bytes, and the tool aims under that, never at it. On the public test set the engine reached a 200 KB target on 18 of 38 cases, 47.4%. Scanned pages get there most of the time. A long text export with many embedded fonts often stops short, and the page below says what to do then.

How to compress a PDF to 200 KB

  1. Choose the PDF

    Press Choose a PDF, or drop the file on the page. The file is read in this tab and is not sent anywhere.

  2. The target is already set

    This page opens at 200 KB, so there is nothing to type. Pick a different level, or enter your own smaller number in KB, if you want another size.

  3. Press Compress

    Four methods race: copy the pages into a fresh file, re-encode the placed images, cut each embedded font down to the glyphs the pages draw, and, only when no other method reached the target, redraw the pages as images with the text kept on top.

  4. Read the check, then download

    Every candidate is opened again and its characters are counted against the source. The page shows the size, the method that won and the characters kept before it offers the download.

The four methods are described in full, with the measurements behind them, in how it works.

What a 200 KB cap really means

Two numbers hide behind the same words. If the form counts a kilobyte as 1,024 bytes, 200 KB is 204,800 bytes. If it counts in flat thousands, the cap is 200,000 bytes, which is 4,800 bytes tighter. The compress tool uses 1,024, so it stops below 204,800.

When the form rejects a file that looks like it fits, the form is counting in thousands. Set the target to 195 KB and run it again. The gap is small enough that the extra cut costs nothing you can see on the page.

How often 200 KB is reachable

200 KB is one of the four targets in the published bench run, so the reach here is measured rather than modelled: 18 of 38 cases met it. Across every target and every document kind the run met 55 of 120, and no output came back larger than its source.

Document kind decides most of it. Scans met their target on 16 of 18 cases, because a page image answers to image quality and nothing else. Text documents met theirs on 10 of 50, because the bytes are fonts and structure, and there is far less to give back.

When the file stops short of 200 KB

The engine never ships a file it did not check. When no arm reaches the target it hands back the smallest candidate that passed verification and tells you the size it got to. A file that lands at 240 KB against a 200 KB cap is usually one page of photography away from fitting.

Two things to try, in order. Drop the pages you do not need, then compress what is left. If the cap is a guideline rather than a hard limit, a 250 KB target or a 300 KB target keeps more detail. The compression guide covers which of the four methods is doing the work.

Questions

Is 200 KB 200,000 bytes or 204,800 bytes?
It depends on who is counting. This tool treats 1 KB as 1,024 bytes, so a 200 KB target means 204,800 bytes. Some upload forms count in flat thousands and cap you at 200,000. If a file that reads as 200 KB gets refused, set the target to 195 KB and run it again.
Why did my scan reach 200 KB but my text document did not?
A scan is page images, and image quality is a dial the engine can turn a long way. A text document is fonts, vectors and structure. There is far less spare weight in it, which is why the bench met the target on 88.9% of scans and 20.0% of text documents.
Can I reduce PDF size to 200KB and keep the text selectable?
Yes. Every candidate is read back before it ships, and any candidate that lost more than 2% of the non-space characters is refused. On the public run, 102 documents carried text and every one of them came back at 100% retention, with no candidate refused.
What happens if the file will not fit under 200 KB?
You get the smallest file the engine could prove, plus the size it reached. Nothing is silently shipped. From there you either remove pages, accept a larger cap, or split the document into parts that each fit.

The other pdfpix tools

All 30 of them run in a browser tab like this one. Each reads its own output back and checks it before offering the download, and none of them needs an account.

Where to go next