Compress PDF to under 200 KB

How many pages stay clear in 200 KB

A 200 KB limit is a budget for the whole file. Every page of a scan is a picture, and all the pictures share that budget. So the question is never only "will it fit?" (a scan always can) but "how clear will each page stay?"

To answer it, we took three real scans of A4 pages, scanned at 300 dpi: a colour contract with a picture and a blue signature, a colour report full of small text, and a grayscale report. We made copies with 1, 2, 4 and 6 pages and put each one under 200 KB with this page. Each cell shows the word the result gave and the pixels per inch (ppi) the pages kept. The original scans had 300.

All nine files came out between 166 KB and 184 KB. A few things to read from the table:

• One page of almost anything stays Good or Sharp. If your upload is a single certificate, 200 KB is plenty.
• Four pages is comfortable. The four-page contract kept 99 ppi, a hair below Good, and looked close to the original on screen.
• Pages full of small print need more room. The contract has wide margins and white space; the reports are packed with text, so at the same page count they kept less.

The words follow the ppi: Sharp means 150 ppi or more, Good 100 or more, Readable 45 or more, and Rough anything below that. Every result in the table is Readable or better.

Twice the room for twice the pages

Here is the most useful thing we found. When we compared our 200 KB results with the same scans under 100 KB, two pages in 200 KB kept almost exactly the detail of one page in 100 KB. And four pages in 200 KB matched two pages in 100 KB. What decides how a page looks is the room each page gets, not the limit on its own:

That gives you a quick way to plan. Divide the limit by the number of pages to see how many KB each page gets, then look up what our scans kept at that much:

• About 200 KB a page (one page under 200 KB): 131 to 159 ppi, Good or Sharp.
• About 100 KB a page (two pages): 95 to 130 ppi, Good, or the top of Readable for pages packed with print.
• About 50 KB a page (four pages): 70 to 99 ppi, Readable.
• About 33 KB a page (six pages): 62 ppi for our colour report, Readable but softer.
• About 15 KB a page (fourteen pages): 48 ppi, close to the edge of Rough.

The same sum also tells you what to do when a document is too long for its limit: take pages out, or split it into uploads that each get their own 200 KB. Both are covered in When 200 KB isn't enough.

Forms that ask for 200 KB

Online application forms for jobs, entrance exams, college admissions and scholarships, and many government services, accept documents only under a set size. 200 KB is one of the most common limits. Each form sets its own rules and changes them from year to year, so the form's own notice always wins. These are the papers that most often land in a 200 KB slot:

• Degree and diploma certificates with their mark statements. A degree with one mark sheet per year or semester is easily four to eight pages. Check whether the form wants all of them or just the final one.
• Class 10 and 12 marksheets in one file. Two or four pages. Under 200 KB they stayed Good or Readable in our tests.
• Caste, income, EWS, domicile and disability certificates. Often one or two pages, sometimes with a back page of conditions. Leave out the back page if it is blank or just printed rules, unless the form asks for it.
• Experience certificates and relieving letters. One letter per employer; several employers mean several pages. Put them in date order.
• Address proof and ID. Usually one page, so under 200 KB it stays Sharp or Good.
• No-objection certificates, character certificates and affidavits. Typed or scanned, one or two pages. A typed one may already be under 200 KB: check before you change anything.

When a form has separate slots for these papers, each slot usually has its own limit. That is good news: every file gets its own 200 KB, so each paper stays clearer than if they all shared one file.

Limits like "50 KB to 200 KB"

Many forms give a range instead of a single number: "between 50 KB and 200 KB", "20 KB to 200 KB" or "minimum 100 KB, maximum 200 KB". Always aim for the top of the range. The bigger the file, the clearer the pages, and nobody checking your form gains anything from a smaller one.

This page is built for that. It doesn't stop at the first size that fits: it keeps trying until the file is within 15% under your limit, for up to six tries. So a scan aimed at 200 KB usually comes out between 170 KB and 200 KB. In our tests the results were 166 KB to 187 KB, all well above a 50 KB or 100 KB minimum.

Two cases need a second look:

• Your file is already under 200 KB. It isn't changed: the page says it is already under the limit, and you can upload the original. If it is also above the minimum, you are done.
• Your file is below the minimum. This page only makes files smaller, never bigger. Our typed one-page application form was just 33 KB, below a 50 KB minimum. Scanning the paper instead of using the typed file, or scanning at a higher setting, gives a bigger file you can then bring under 200 KB here.

A form that says "up to 200 KB" without a minimum works the same way: pick 200 KB, which is already picked on this page.

How the KB is counted matters at the top of a range. "Under 200 KB" here means at most 200,000 bytes. A file app that counts 1,024 bytes to a KB shows that as about 195 KB, so the file is under 200 KB on every website, whichever way it counts, and there is no need to aim lower to be safe. The sizes this page shows after each file are counted in 1,024-byte KB, like most file apps.

What a page looks like under 200 KB

Numbers only go so far, so we opened the results and compared them with the original scan, page by page, at normal screen zoom. Our sample contract is a good test: a heading, numbered paragraphs of ordinary print, a colour picture, a blue signature and a small "Page 1 of 4" line at the foot of each page.

Notice the last row: "Readable" covers a wide band, from 45 to 99 ppi. Near the top of that band, as with four pages here, the page looks almost untouched. Near the bottom, as with fourteen pages, ordinary print is fine but small print struggles. So when the result says Readable, open the file and check the smallest text that matters to you: a roll number, a date, a seal.

Typed text is not affected by any of this. If your PDF was made on a computer, its words are real text that stays sharp at any size. Only its pictures, such as a logo, a photo or a scanned signature, can get softer.

Putting a long document under 200 KB

To see how far 200 KB stretches, we joined all three of our scans into one PDF of 14 pages and 23.1 MB. It fitted: 180 KB, done in 12.4 seconds in our test, with the word Readable at 48 ppi. That is as far as we would push it. The text could be read, but small print and the signature had suffered (see the table above).

If your form wants a long document in one 200 KB file, these steps give the clearest result:

1. Keep only the pages the form needs. Use Split PDF to pick them out. Blank backs, cover pages and instructions printed on the reverse all eat into the budget.
2. Join the papers in the right order, if they are separate files, with Merge PDF. Put them in the order the form lists them.
3. Bring the joined file under 200 KB here, last. The limit is checked on the file you upload, and shrinking first and joining later adds up the sizes: two 190 KB files joined make a file of about 380 KB.
4. Read the result word, then open the file and check the pages with the smallest print.

If you have many separate PDFs that each need to be under 200 KB, choose them all at once instead. Each one becomes its own row with its own result and its own Download button, and each name gets -200KB added, like degree-certificate-200KB.pdf.

Colour or grayscale?

A common tip is to scan in black and white to make the file smaller. We tested whether it helps under a size limit. We made a grayscale copy of our four-page colour contract and put both under 200 KB:

• The colour scan came out at 183 KB, Readable at 99 ppi.
• The grayscale copy came out at 187 KB, Good at 102 ppi.

So grayscale gained less than 3% in ppi, just enough to tip the word from Readable to Good, but not enough to see on screen. Most of a scan's size is the fine detail of the print, which a grayscale copy still has to keep; the colour itself costs comparatively little.

What you lose with grayscale can matter more: a blue signature turns grey, a coloured stamp or seal turns into a dark patch, and some offices want to see that a document is in colour. Our advice:

• Scan in colour if the form doesn't say. Under 200 KB it costs you almost nothing.
• Scan in grayscale only when the form asks for it, or when a long document is right on the edge of Rough and every bit helps.
• Keep the scanner at 300 dpi. Our test scans were 300 dpi, and the compressor brings the ppi down to fit, so a higher setting only makes the original bigger.

Typed PDFs and 200 KB

A PDF made on a computer, such as a certificate downloaded from a portal or a letter saved from Word, is mostly text and fonts. Those are copied exactly as they are so the words stay sharp, which means they can't shrink. Such a file is usually small already, but when it isn't, it may not go under 200 KB at all. You then see "Over 200 KB" and get the smallest version possible:

• A one-page typed application form was 33 KB, far under the limit. Nothing to do.
• One page split out of a maths textbook stayed at 302 KB, because most of it is the 16 fonts its formulas use.
• A 14-page research paper of 992 KB could go no lower than 766 KB.

For a short typed file that is Over, there is a reliable trick: turn the page into a picture, then shrink the picture. We turned that 302 KB textbook page into a JPG with PDF to JPG at Normal quality, put the JPG back into a PDF with JPG to PDF, and brought that under 200 KB here. It came out at 167 KB and Sharp, at 187 ppi, with every formula clean. The words can no longer be searched or copied, which an upload form doesn't need.

Don't try the trick on a long document. The same steps on all 14 pages of the research paper fitted (171 KB), but Rough at 42 ppi: only the headings could be read. For a long typed file, upload fewer pages or ask whether the first page alone is enough.

When 200 KB isn't enough

Sometimes the result says Rough, or Over, or the pages just don't look clear enough to send. Try these, from the one that helps most:

1. Upload fewer pages. Halving the pages roughly gives each page the room of twice the limit, as the table above shows.
2. Use separate uploads, if the form has more than one slot or allows "additional documents". Split the PDF with Split PDF and add all the parts here together; each part gets its own 200 KB.
3. Check whether a bigger limit is allowed. Some forms take 500 KB or 1 MB for long documents. Pick that size above. On our Resize PDF page, the four-page sample came out Good at 445 KB under 500 KB.
4. Start again from your first scan. A file that was already squeezed for another form has lost detail for good, and squeezing it again only loses more.
5. Crop to the paper. A page photographed on a table carries the table, and that costs part of the budget. Most scanner apps can crop to the paper's edge before saving.

If the form gives you no choice and the result is Rough, it is still worth uploading after you have checked that the important numbers can be read. A soft page is accepted; a file over the limit is not.

Signatures, stamps and photos

Thin lines and light colours are the first things to fade when a page gets less room. On our tests under 200 KB, the blue signature on the contract stayed blue and clean on one page and on four pages. On 14 pages it turned grey. Stamps and seals are made of the same thin lines and light colours, so expect a faint stamp to fade before a strong, dark one.

A few habits help:

• Sign with a dark blue or black pen, not a light ballpoint, before you scan.
• Make sure the stamp is clear on the paper. A smudged stamp only gets worse.
• Keep the page with the signature or stamp in a short file when the form lets you. On its own, one page stays Sharp or Good.

Your passport-size photo and signature as separate uploads are a different thing. Forms usually want those as JPG pictures with their own size and pixel rules. This page works on PDFs only, and NoUploadPDF can't yet resize a JPG to a number of KB. If a form wants a photo or a photographed document inside a PDF, put it in a PDF first with JPG to PDF, then bring that PDF under 200 KB here.

For stricter forms that want 100 KB, there is a page set up for that too: Compress PDF to 100 KB. You can also pick 100 KB right here.

Your papers stay private

A 200 KB upload is often your degree, your caste or income certificate, or a letter from your employer. Most online PDF tools send the file to their own computers to work on it. This one doesn't. A program running inside your browser does the work on your phone or computer, and the new file is saved straight back to your device.

You can check this yourself: let the page finish loading, switch off Wi-Fi and mobile data, then make your file. It still works, because there is nothing to send. There's no account, no sign-up and no watermark on the result. Our privacy policy explains what the site does and doesn't collect.

Limits

• Typed PDFs have a smallest size set by their text and fonts. Our 14-page research paper stayed at 766 KB.
• All the pages of one file share the 200 KB. Fourteen scanned pages fitted, but small print suffered.
• PDFs that need a password to open can't be compressed yet. Remove the password in your PDF reader first.
• A digital signature inside the PDF stops being valid when the file changes. A signature scanned as part of the page is just a picture and stays.
• This page only makes files smaller. It can't raise a file to a minimum size, and it doesn't resize JPG photos.
• Big scans take longer, because each try is a full pass over the file: our 23.1 MB, 14-page set took 12.4 seconds.