PDF Compressor

Reduce the size of a scanned PDF so it fits an upload limit, without compressing it so far that a verification officer cannot read it.

Nothing is uploaded. The PDF is read and rebuilt inside your own browser, so your certificates never leave your device.

Your documents never leave your device. The PDF is read and rebuilt in your browser and nothing is uploaded to us or to anyone else.

What this tool works on, and what it does not

It compresses scanned PDFs — the kind you get from photographing or scanning certificates, where every page is one large image. That is where the size problem usually is, because a phone camera produces several megabytes per page and portals routinely cap uploads at a few hundred kilobytes.

It will refuse a PDF that contains real text, and that refusal is deliberate. Compressing such a file this way would turn the text into a picture of text: you could no longer select, search or copy it, and it would look worse at every size. Notification PDFs issued by government boards are almost always this kind. A tool that quietly ruins a document is worse than one that declines, so this one tells you instead.

Choosing a compression level

Light — modest reduction, quality barely changes. Use when you are only slightly over the limit.
Medium — the sensible default. Usually cuts a phone scan by 70 to 90 per cent and stays clearly readable.
Strong — for tight limits. Check the result carefully; fine print is the first thing to suffer.

You can also set a target size in KB. The tool then steps the quality down until the file fits, and tells you if it cannot get there rather than producing something unreadable and calling it done.

Check the result before you upload it

This matters more than anything else on this page. Open the compressed file and look at every page at full size. The things to check are the ones officers actually read: registration numbers, roll numbers, the date of issue, the signature and the seal. If any of those has gone soft, use a lighter setting or rescan the document rather than submitting it.

Keep the original as well. Later stages sometimes ask for a clearer copy, and you cannot recover detail from a compressed file.

If it still will not fit

In order of what actually helps:

Remove any page the notification does not ask for. People often submit more than is required.
Rescan at a lower camera resolution rather than compressing a huge file heavily — a 5-megapixel scan compressed lightly reads better than a 48-megapixel scan compressed hard.
Check whether the portal wants separate files per document rather than one combined PDF. Many do, and splitting solves the problem outright.
Only then compress more aggressively.

A note on other free compressors

Most upload your file to a server, process it there and delete it at some later point you have to take on trust. A certificate carries your name, your date of birth, your parents’ names, a photograph and often a registration number — enough to be useful to someone committing identity fraud. This tool does the work on your device, which is also why it keeps working if your connection drops after the page has loaded.