No uploads. No accounts. No watermark on the output. Filoraio shrinks PDFs locally on your device — pick Light mode to preserve every detail or Visual mode to slash file size by up to 80%.
Filoraio runs the merge directly inside your browser using a small WebAssembly engine. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is queued, and you can verify it yourself — open your browser’s DevTools, switch to the Network tab, and watch it stay quiet.
They’re read into your browser’s memory through a standard file picker.
The merge runs locally — no request leaves your device while it processes.
The combined PDF lands in your downloads folder, the same way any other download would.
No upload bar, no progress spinner waiting on a server. Works offline once the page is loaded.
From upload to compressed download in under a minute on most documents. Bigger files at higher DPIs take a few seconds longer.
Drag a PDF onto the picker or click to choose. Your file stays in this tab — no upload, no quota, no account.
Light keeps text searchable and links/annotations intact (typical savings 5–15%). Visual rasterises every page to a JPEG (typical savings 50–80%) — pick this for image-heavy or scanned documents.
Click Compress PDF. You'll see live progress and the final reduction percentage. Click Download to save the smaller copy to your device.
Anywhere a PDF needs to slip under an attachment cap, an upload limit, or a slow connection, this is the tool you reach for.
Trim a multi-page CV with embedded photos so it fits the 5 MB attachment cap on most application portals — without losing the layout the recruiter sees.
Shrink scanned thesis chapters or lab reports so they fit Turnitin / Moodle upload limits without quality drops that hide the figures.
Compress exhibit bundles before e-filing — courts often enforce strict per-document size caps that bloated office exports overshoot by default.
Reduce listing brochures with high-resolution photography so they email cleanly without the recipient's server bouncing them as oversized.
Send a 150 MB portfolio PDF as a 25 MB shareable file when a Dropbox link would be overkill for a single client review.
Trim a manual or e-book before downloading offline — smaller file means faster download means less time tethered to the wifi.
Four common reasons people search for a way to shrink a PDF — and the exact workflow each one collapses into.
The portal caps attachments at 5 MB but your CV with embedded portfolio shots is 20 MB. Pick Visual mode → Better preset, hit Compress, and the same CV downloads at ~6–8 MB — small enough to submit, sharp enough to read on screen.
The court's e-filing system rejects anything over 10 MB. Scans are mostly images, so Visual mode wins — the Smallest preset typically takes a 50 MB scan down to 6–10 MB. Text in scanned exhibits isn't selectable anyway, so the visual-mode trade-off is moot.
Your client searches the contract by keyword in Acrobat. Visual mode would break that. Pick Light mode — the file shrinks 5–15% by stripping metadata and re-packing, but every word stays selectable and Find still works.
Gmail caps attachments at 25 MB; your portfolio is 60 MB of photography. Visual mode → Good preset usually halves it on the first pass while keeping the images sharp. If it's still too big, try Better; if you need to email rather than share a link, Smallest will get there.
Four small habits that get you a smaller file without breaking what made the PDF useful in the first place.
Many bloated PDFs (from Office, InDesign, Pages exports) are inflated by metadata and unused objects — Light mode strips that without touching anything visible. If the reduction isn't enough, Visual mode is one click away.
For phone/tablet reading, the Smallest preset (72 DPI) looks identical to higher DPIs — phone screens can't display the extra detail. For desktop reading, jump to Better (96 DPI). For print, Good (150 DPI) is the floor.
Re-compressing an already-compressed PDF gives you a bigger file, not a smaller one — each pass re-encodes the JPEG, adding artifacts without removing bytes. If the result isn't small enough, undo and try a more aggressive preset on the original.
Rasterising every page flattens hyperlinks into the image. If your PDF relies on clickable links (cross-references, footnotes, external URLs), use Light mode. For purely visual documents (portfolios, scans), Visual wins on size with no functional cost.
Side by side with the average online PDF compressor — including the ones with millions of monthly users.
| Feature | Filoraio | Typical online PDF tools |
|---|---|---|
| Where files are processed | On your device | Uploaded to servers |
| Two compression modes | Light + Visual | Usually one or the other |
| Before/after size comparison | Shown after every run | Often hidden until download |
| Watermark on output | None | Often added on free tier |
| Account required | No | Often required for full features |
| Daily compression cap | Unlimited | Often 2–5 per day |
Quick answers to the things people ask most often before using this tool.
Yes. No account, no email, no daily quota, and no watermark on the compressed output. The page is supported by ads — never the file you download. Compress as many PDFs as you need.
Nowhere outside your browser. Compression runs locally using open-source PDF processing libraries — your file is held in your device's RAM while it's processed and downloads back to you. Filoraio's servers never see it.
Light mode strips metadata and re-packs the PDF without touching the content — text stays searchable, hyperlinks work, annotations are preserved. Typical reduction 5–15%. Visual mode renders every page to a JPEG and assembles a new PDF — text becomes pixels (not selectable, not searchable) but file size drops 50–80% on most documents. Pick Light for text-dense docs, Visual for image-heavy ones.
Light mode: no — every element comes through pixel-perfect. Visual mode: depends on the preset. Good (150 DPI) is print-ready and looks identical to the source at normal viewing distances. Better (96 DPI) is sharp on screens. Smallest (72 DPI) is fine on phones but you'll see slight softness on a 4K monitor.
Filoraio doesn't currently let you target a precise size, but the three Visual presets cover the common goals. For ~100 KB on a single-page document, Smallest usually gets you there. For multi-page docs targeting 1–2 MB, Better is the right starting point. Run, check the reduction percentage, and try a different preset if needed.
Use Light mode — it preserves every byte of visual content exactly. The savings come from stripping metadata (file creation dates, author names, software signatures) and re-packing the PDF's internal object table. Reduction is modest (5–15%) but truly lossless.
If a PDF is already optimised (e.g. exported by a tool that knows how to pack PDFs efficiently), Light mode has very little to work with — it might shave 1–2%. Image-heavy PDFs also see small Light-mode gains because metadata is a tiny fraction of the file. For meaningful reduction on those, use Visual mode.
You used Visual mode. It renders every page to a JPEG, which means the text is now made of pixels, not characters. Re-run with Light mode if text selection matters. If you need both small size and searchable text, the trade-off doesn't exist in pure-browser compression — you'd need a server-side OCR + compression pipeline.
Open this page in Safari or Chrome, drop your PDF, pick a mode, and click Compress. The smaller PDF downloads directly to your Downloads folder. Works on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs — no app install, no Apple ID, no Preview workaround.
Open this page in Safari, tap the picker, choose a PDF from the Files app, pick a mode, and tap Compress. The smaller file saves directly back to Files. The whole interface is touch-friendly — no app install, no Apple ID, no subscription.
Gmail caps attachments at 25 MB, Outlook at 20 MB. For a PDF that's just over the limit, Light mode + a single pass is often enough. For documents 2–5× over the cap, Visual mode → Better preset typically gets there. For very large scanned PDFs, Smallest is the surest bet.
Filoraio handles owner-restricted PDFs (printing/copying locks) automatically — restrictions come off as part of the compression process. For PDFs with user passwords (encryption requiring a password to open), unlock the file first with our Unlock PDF tool, then compress the unlocked output here.
There's no hard cap. Compression runs in your browser's memory — the practical limit is your device's available RAM. Most browsers handle 100+ MB PDFs without trouble. For Visual mode on a 500+ MB document, expect 30–90 seconds of processing.
Yes — and in Preview (Mac), Foxit, Chrome's built-in PDF viewer, every browser, and every mobile PDF reader. Both Light and Visual modes output standard PDF 1.7 files with no Filoraio-specific structure. The compressed PDF is fully portable across every PDF reader.
Tools picked because they pair naturally with the one above — the next step in a typical PDF workflow.