Compress PDF to 500 KB
Recommended compression is pre-selected — good quality, strong size reduction.
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How to compress a PDF to 500 KB
500 KB is a roomy target, so you rarely have to sacrifice much quality to hit it. This page opens the compressor on the Recommended level: text stays sharp, images soften only slightly, and scanned documents of two to ten pages usually land comfortably under 500 KB. The exact final size is shown on the result screen before you download anything.
Why 500 KB is such a common limit
It is the default attachment-friendly size. Plenty of university portals, job boards, court e-filing systems and government upload forms cap a single document at 500 KB, and many email setups start warning around half a megabyte. It is small enough to send anywhere and large enough that a normal multi-page document survives it intact.
What actually makes a PDF large
Almost always images, not text. A hundred pages of pure text can sit under 200 KB, while one photo pasted into a single page can push a file past 5 MB. That is why compression works so well on scans and so little on text documents that are already small.
If your PDF is mostly text and still huge, the usual culprit is embedded fonts or a scanner that saved every page as a full-resolution photograph. Compression fixes the second case dramatically.
If it will not get under 500 KB
Three things to try, in order. Switch to Extreme compression on the options panel. Remove pages you do not need with Remove Pages — blank scanner pages are common and cost real space. Or split the document with Split PDF and send it as two files, each comfortably under the limit.
Need a tighter target? Use Compress PDF to 200 KB or 100 KB instead.
Need a different size limit?
Frequently asked questions
Which level should I use?
Start with Recommended (pre-selected). If the result is still over 500 KB, switch to Extreme and run it again.
Does the text stay selectable?
Compressed pages are re-encoded as images, so text is no longer selectable — the visual quality remains good.