Compress a PDF to under 100 KB
Lots of application and exam forms only accept PDFs under 100 KB. Here’s what makes a PDF big, what to try first, and how to get under the limit without sending your documents to a website.
Why your PDF is too big
Text is cheap and pictures are expensive. A page typed in a word processor and saved as PDF is often only a few tens of kilobytes. The same page scanned or photographed on a phone is a picture of the page, and one phone photo can be several megabytes. That’s why a one-page scan of a marksheet can be many times over a 100 KB limit.
Try these before compressing
- Send only the pages the form asks for. Plainware PDF’s Split tool (free) pulls out just the pages you need.
- Scan at 150 to 200 dpi, in grayscale, unless the form asks for colour. A 300 dpi colour scan holds far more detail than an upload form needs.
- Crop phone photos to the edges of the paper before turning them into a PDF.
Get it under 100 KB with Plainware PDF
Add Plainware PDF to Chrome and click its button in the toolbar.
Choose Compress to a size. It’s a Pro tool, and it’s marked Pro before you open it.
Drop in your PDF, choose 100 KB and run it.
Check the result. You see the real size before you download, and a note if the text is no longer selectable.
Open the new file and zoom in on the smallest text, such as your roll number or date of birth, before you upload it.
How it gets there
Compress to a size starts with the gentlest method and only goes further if it has to:
- Tidy up without losing anything. It rebuilds the file and drops parts nothing uses. If that’s enough, the text stays sharp and selectable.
- Recompress the pictures inside. It lowers the quality and resolution of the images step by step, and leaves text as text.
- Turn pages into pictures. As a last resort it saves each page as an image at a lower resolution. The text is then no longer selectable, and it tells you so.
It never rounds down: a 101 KB file is not called 100 KB. If 100 KB can’t be reached, it says so and offers the smallest file it managed.
Free or Pro?
The free Compress tool has light, medium and strong settings, with no limits. It may get a small scan under 100 KB, but it doesn’t aim for a size. Compress to a size is part of Plainware Pro: ₹249 in India or $9 elsewhere, paid once. See pricing.
Before you upload
- Read the form’s other rules too: the file type (PDF or JPG), the number of pages, and sometimes a minimum size.
- If a photo or signature also needs exact pixels and kilobytes, the Photo and signature resizer (Pro) does that separately.
- Plainware PDF isn’t connected to or approved by any exam board, university or government portal. 100 KB is just a size.