How to compress a PDF to 100 KB or 200 KB for an online form
Scanned certificates and phone scans are often 1 to 5 MB, while many portals accept only 100, 200 or 300 KB per PDF. Most of that size is the scanned images inside the PDF, so the fix is to store those images at a lower quality.
Steps
- Open Compress PDF to 100 KB, or the page for your limit: 200 KB, 300 KB or 500 KB.
- Choose the PDF. It is processed in your browser and never uploaded.
- The tool tries quality and resolution settings until the file fits under the limit, then shows the new size.
- Download the PDF and open it once to check that every page is readable before you upload it.
If it still doesn’t fit
- Remove pages the portal doesn’t need. Each page adds size.
- Scan in greyscale for text documents. Colour scans are larger.
- Crop the margins before scanning. Empty paper still takes space.
Good to know
Compressing this way turns each page into an image, so text can no longer be selected or searched. Portals that only check the file size don’t mind, but keep your original for your own records.
Starting from photos instead of a PDF? Turn them into one PDF under 200 KB in one step.