Need a PDF under 10 KB? Shrink a small cropped item — a photo, signature or ID card — to 10 KB for a portal with a very tight limit, all on your device.
A full A4 scan cannot stay readable at 10 KB. One text-heavy page lands at about 34 DPI, below the roughly 70 DPI where small print stays legible. 10 KB suits something small — a photo, a signature, an ID card cropped to its edges — or a PDF whose text is real text rather than a scan.
| Document | Pages kept sharp (about 100 DPI) | Pages kept readable (about 70 DPI) | One page reaches |
|---|---|---|---|
| Text-heavy scan (A4, greyscale, 150 DPI) | 0 | 0 | about 34 DPI |
| Certificate scan (A4, colour, 200 DPI) | 0 | 0 | about 43 DPI |
| Phone photo of a page (12 MP) | 0 | 0 | about 34 DPI |
Moving up to 20 KB adds room for no extra readable text page, only a little more detail.
How we measured: this page's own compressor was run on three test documents of 1 to 30 pages, and the largest page count that stays under 10,000 bytes was recorded at each quality level. Your scans will differ with paper, ink and scanner, so treat these as a guide.
Not one full A4 scan at readable quality. In our measurements a single text-heavy page reached only about 34 DPI at 10 KB. Use 10 KB for a small cropped item, or for a PDF with real text.
Most scanned PDFs can. The tool shrinks the images inside the PDF, so it works best on scans and photos; a PDF that is mostly text or vector drawings has little to remove, and the tool tells you the smallest size it could reach.
A single text-heavy A4 page keeps about 34 DPI at 10 KB in our measurements: too soft for small print. Real text in a PDF (not a scan) is left untouched and stays sharp and selectable at any size.
It is the largest file the tool can produce that is still under the target, so you keep as much quality as the limit allows. It aims below 10,000 bytes, so it passes whether a portal counts a kilobyte as 1,000 or 1,024 bytes.
No. Compression runs in your browser on your own device. Nothing is sent to a server, which matters for ID cards, certificates and mark sheets.
Their document PDFs must be between 50 KB and 300 KB. A file below 50 KB is rejected as well as one above 300 KB, so do not compress further than you need to.
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