pdfviz

Compress PDF
to 150 KB

or drop one here
Compression level
Target size
Choose a PDF file first.

Compressing a PDF to 150 KB means 153,600 bytes. Government upload fields commonly ask for it. The bench ran 150 KB on a 40-page text file and landed at 164.4 KB from 208.8 KB in all three runs: close, but over the target. pdfviz runs entirely in your browser - your file is never uploaded, no account, no watermark - and every output is checked before download.

How to compress a PDF to 150 KB online

  1. Choose the PDF

    Press Choose a PDF, or drop the file on the page. The file is read in this browser tab and is not sent anywhere.

  2. The target is already set

    This page opens at 150 KB, so there is nothing to type. Pick a different level, or enter your own smaller number in KB, if you want another size.

  3. Press Compress

    Four methods race: copy the pages into a fresh file, re-encode the placed images, cut each embedded font down to the glyphs the pages draw, and, only when no other method reached the target, redraw the pages as images with the text kept on top.

  4. Read the check, then download

    Every candidate is opened again and its characters are counted against the source. The page shows the size, the method that won and the characters kept before it offers the download.

The four methods are described in full, with the measurements behind them, in how it works.

What to expect at a 150 KB target

No hit rate is measured for 150 KB itself. Reach rises as the cap loosens, and your own file is not a corpus: its kind matters far more than any average.

Scans generally meet tight targets more often than text exports, because image quality is a dial with a long travel while fonts and structure are not. A scanned form at 150 KB is a normal ask. A twelve page text report at 150 KB usually is not. The tool is free, so running it as a size reducer at 150 KB costs one attempt and tells you the answer for your own file.

What to drop first when 150 KB is close

Look at what the tool reports after a miss. If the winning method was font subsetting, the file is font heavy and the next saving is in removing pages, not in quality. If a page render won and stopped at its quality floor, the pages are photographic and there is nothing left to give.

Pages are the cheapest thing to cut. A cover sheet, a blank verso from a duplex scan, and a page of instructions the reader already has are often a third of the file. Removing pages before compressing changes the arithmetic more than any setting does.

Where a 150 KB limit shows up in the real world

Some Indian government forms have asked for 150 KB scans. Check the current form before submitting, since limits change without notice. Some UK portals have used 150 KB caps for identity document uploads, and a number of Middle Eastern government e-services cap individual document scans at the same number. Check the current requirement before submitting.

It is the number you get when a form was sized for one scanned page at a modest quality, and nobody revisited it. A single page scan at 150 KB will look clean. A four page scan at 150 KB gives each page about 38 KB, which starts to soften small print. If your document is longer, split it and upload the parts.

The 100 KB target is the tighter stop. The 200 KB target is one chip away if the form turns out to be more generous than the label. The size breakdown tool shows where the bytes are going.

Running it

Open the compress tool, choose the file, set the target to 150 KB and press Compress. Four methods race, every candidate is read back and checked, and you get the result with the method that won and the size it reached.

Your file is never uploaded. It is read from disk into the tab, worked on there, and written back to your downloads folder. It is an online tool only in the sense that the page came from the web: the compression runs on your own machine. The 200 KB target is one chip away if the form turns out to be more generous than the label.

Questions about compressing to 150 KB

How many bytes is a 150 KB upload limit?
153,600 bytes at 1,024 bytes to the kilobyte, which is how the tool counts. A form counting in flat thousands stops at 150,000, a difference of 3,600 bytes. Target 145 KB if a file that looked like it fitted was refused.
Why is 150 KB so common on government forms?
The field was sized for one scanned page at a modest quality, and those limits are rarely revisited once a system is live. The number reflects storage per applicant rather than anything about the document you are sending.
My file stopped at 170 KB against a 150 KB target. What now?
You are one page or one quality step away. Remove any page the form does not need and run it again. If every page is required, rescanning the source in greyscale usually closes a gap that size on its own.
Does compressing to 150 KB remove the document metadata?
No. The title, author, subject and keywords are carried across to the output on purpose, so the compressed file says the same things about itself as the source did. If clearing those fields is what you actually want, use the privacy scan tool, which lists what the file carries before it strips anything.
Is my file uploaded to compress it to 150 KB?
No. pdfviz runs entirely in your browser via WebAssembly. The PDF is read from disk into memory, processed there, and written back to your downloads folder. Your PDF is sent nowhere; only anonymous usage counts leave the tab, and no account is needed.
Will a 150 KB target keep my text selectable?
Yes. Every candidate is read back before it ships, and any candidate that lost more than 2% of the non-space characters is refused.

The other pdfviz tools

They all run in a browser tab like this one. Each reads its own output back and checks it before offering the download, and none of them needs an account.