Compress PDF
Reduce the size of a PDF so it clears an email attachment limit. Furtu parses the document and writes it back out with compressed object streams and without redundant structure, which shrinks text-heavy files without touching the visible content.
Drops author, title, producer and timestamps. Often saves a surprising amount on files exported from office software.
Some generators write the same image or font several times. Furtu writes one copy and references it.
How compress pdf works
- Add your PDFsDrop in one or several files. Each is checked for a real PDF header first.
- Choose what to stripMetadata removal and duplicate-object merging are both on by default because neither changes what you see.
- Compare and downloadFurtu shows the original size, the new size and the percentage saved for every file, then hands them back for download.
What you get
Shrink a PDF by rebuilding it more efficiently. Everything happens inside this page: the file is read by your browser, transformed in memory and handed straight back to you as a download. There is no upload queue, no waiting for a server, and nothing left behind when you close the tab.
Supported formats
Furtu accepts .pdf files up to 500 MB each, and processes up to 20 files in one run.
- Every file is checked against its real file signature, not just its name, so a renamed or corrupt file is rejected with an explanation instead of failing halfway through.
- Files over the limit are refused up front rather than after a long wait.
Limitations, stated up front
- Furtu compresses the document structure, not the pixels inside scanned images. Image-heavy scans often see only small savings.
- Digital signatures are invalidated by any rewrite of the file.
- There is no fixed quality slider, because there is no re-encoding step to control. If you need a specific byte ceiling for a scan, that is a different tool.
What “compression” really means here
Most online PDF compressors rasterise every page to a JPEG and rebuild the file. The result is small but the text is no longer text: you lose search, selection, accessibility and crisp printing. Furtu keeps the document a real document, so the savings are smaller and the file stays usable.
Frequently asked questions
How much smaller will my file get?
It depends entirely on the source. Text documents exported from a word processor often shrink by 10–40% because they contain a lot of duplicated structure. A scan that is already a single highly compressed image stream may barely change. Furtu shows the real before and after size so there are no surprises.
Does the text still look the same?
Yes, and it stays selectable and searchable. Furtu does not re-render pages to images, which is what most “compressors” do to reach headline numbers — that trick wrecks text selection and search.
Why can’t I shrink a scanned document much?
Scans are usually one large image per page. Compressing the file structure around a JPEG does nothing to the JPEG itself. Getting a scanned file substantially smaller requires resampling the image, which trades away resolution — Furtu does not do that silently.
Are my files uploaded?
No. Compression happens in your browser. This is the single most common question we get, which is why the processing is local by default rather than by policy.