Compress PDF for Email

Email providers limit attachment sizes: Gmail allows about 25 MB per message, Outlook.com about 20 MB, and many company mail servers only 10 MB. And because attachments are encoded when sent, a file can hit the limit even if it looks slightly smaller on disk. When your PDF bounces or gets turned into a cloud link you didn't want, compressing it is the simplest fix. This page opens the compressor with settings that aim for a comfortable email-friendly size.

Drop your PDF, click Compress PDF, and download the smaller copy to attach. Scans, photo-heavy brochures and documents created on a phone camera benefit most — a 40 MB scan often ends up just a few megabytes. If you want to be sure it fits under a particular limit, type a target size in KB, such as 9000 for a 10 MB company server. Smaller attachments also send faster and are kinder to recipients reading on mobile data.

One thing to know: the compressor re-renders pages as optimized JPEG images, so text in the compressed file won't be selectable. That's perfect for sending a scan or a signed form, but if the recipient needs to copy text from a report, consider splitting it into two emails with Split PDF instead. Your document is processed entirely in your browser — it's never uploaded, which is exactly what you want for payslips, contracts or medical records that you're about to email to someone you trust.

If the document is still too large even after strong compression, consider splitting it into two or three parts and sending them in separate emails, each clearly labelled part 1, part 2 and so on.