Best PDF Compressors in 2026: the buyer's shortlist

ToAny is the best PDF compressor for private files because it works on your device. Compression runs in the browser and never uses ToAny's conversion server, so a contract or an ID scan is not uploaded. The page shows a live "0 bytes uploaded" counter, and you can confirm it in your browser's Network panel.

The tool accepts PDFs up to 400 MiB. There is no daily limit, no account and no email address, and you can drop several files and download them as a ZIP. Three levels are on offer: Keep quality, Balanced and Smallest. You can also set a fit-under size, with presets from 200 KB to 2 MB and an Email 25 MB preset. The result is never larger than the original. If a file cannot shrink, you get the original back with a reason.

ToAny is free and has no paid tier, so there is no price to compare. It sits within a wider site of 190 formats and 1,195 pairs, plus PDF tools such as merge, split, rotate, protect and unlock. Those PDF tools also run in the browser. A small number of ToAny's other conversions (16 pairs, such as PPTX to PDF) run on its server, but only after you consent to each upload.

Now the weak spots. ToAny has 10 PDF tools plus compress, while Adobe lists 25+ free tools, Smallpdf 30+ and PDF2Go 50 apps. It has no desktop app, no mobile app and no API. It also has no cloud import. Because the work happens on your device, memory is the limit: a PDF with ten 25-megapixel pictures needed about 1.5 GB of renderer memory in our desktop test, and we have not measured phones.

Hitting a tight size target costs picture quality, so check the pages afterwards.

Adobe was founded in December 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke and is headquartered in San Jose, California. Its online compressor sits among 25+ free tools that Adobe lists for PDFs and e-signing.

The online tool runs on Adobe's servers. The desktop app, by contrast, compresses locally. Adobe's page says files are deleted unless you sign in to save them, but it states no retention period. Basic compression does not need an account.

Free use is limited, and Adobe does not print the number. Its page says unlimited compression, batch processing and advanced setting controls need a paid Acrobat plan. Smallpdf also withholds its number, so Adobe is not alone in this.

Pricing is shown clearly on Adobe's pricing page. Acrobat Standard is US$24.99/mo on a monthly plan, or US$14.99/mo on an annual plan billed monthly, or US$179.88/yr prepaid. Acrobat Pro is US$29.99/mo monthly and US$239.88/yr prepaid, and Studio is US$34.99/mo monthly. Acrobat Pro has a 7-day free trial.

Adobe is the right comparison point for large organisations already on its software. The company reports 31,360 employees as of November 2025. On reputation, Trustpilot shows Adobe as a whole at 1.1 out of 5 across 7,540 reviews, and that score covers the whole company, not Acrobat specifically.

Against ToAny, Adobe wins on breadth, with 25+ free tools, and on having a local desktop app. It loses on free-tier clarity and on uploading your file for online use. If you only need to shrink a PDF now and then, the paid plans are a lot to commit to.

Smallpdf is a Swiss company, founded in 2013, with teams in Zurich and Belgrade. Its tagline is "We make PDF easy." The pricing page lists 30+ document tools, and the site offers web, desktop and mobile access in 24 languages.

Files are uploaded to Smallpdf's servers in Ireland. On free tools, files are deleted after 1 hour. If you keep files in an account, they stay until you delete them and are then removed within 1 hour. Smallpdf states ISO/IEC 27001 certification and compliance with GDPR, CCPA and nFADP.

The free plan is limited. Smallpdf says it has a daily download limit on most tools, and that you wait 24 hours for it to reset, but the exact number is not shown. Pro adds Strong Compression, Edit Text and OCR. A 7-day free trial is offered, and you can cancel any time.

Smallpdf gives no absolute prices in its static pages. A company blog post says the yearly plan is 25% cheaper per month than monthly, so we cannot quote a monthly figure here.

On scale, the about page claims 40+ million monthly users and 100+ million monthly tasks, and the pricing page says it has been trusted by 1.7 billion people since 2013. These are the vendor's own claims. Trustpilot rates Smallpdf 4.8 (Excellent) from 5,278 reviews. The footer also links to Embed PDF and Developers, though we did not read the API terms.

Compared with ToAny, Smallpdf offers a more polished interface, more tools and apps, and strong third-party ratings. It uploads your file, and the free plan caps your daily use, so for private documents or heavy use ToAny is the stronger fit.

iLovePDF was founded in 2010 and is based in Barcelona. It is the most complete hosted option here for people who want apps and automation. It is available on the web, on Mac and Windows desktops, and on iOS and Android, and it offers an API called iLoveAPI with integrations including Zapier, Make and WordPress.

The free Basic plan has per-task limits. For compression, the file limit is 200 MB and the batch limit is 2 files per task. Premium raises most file limits to 4 GB and most batches to 10. The free plan shows ads, and removing them is a Premium benefit.

Premium was shown at 11 AUD/month billed monthly, or 84 AUD billed annually, which works out to 7 AUD/month. The page appeared to be priced by region, and we did not verify a USD price. Students and academic professionals can get a free year of Premium.

Files are processed on iLovePDF's servers, not in the browser. They are automatically deleted within two hours of processing, and you can delete them manually from the download screen. iLovePDF states ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification and says it is fully GDPR compliant.

On reputation, iLovePDF reports 16.5 million documents processed every day, and its pricing page cites a 4.9 Trustpilot average. Both figures are self-reported, because Trustpilot returned an error when we tried to check it. The language selector lists 26 options.

Set beside ToAny, iLovePDF wins on apps, API and integrations, and on a 200 MB free file size that does not depend on your device. It loses on privacy, since the file is uploaded, and on the 2-file task limit for compression.

PDF2Go is run by QaamGo Web GmbH in Radolfzell, Germany. Its compressor has the most controls among the free hosted tools here: six quality presets from 20 dpi (Insane) to 300 dpi (Prepress), Grayscale, Remove Images, several PDFs in one go, and a one-click 10 MB email preset. A target file size is also available, but it needs a free account.

Without an account you can upload up to 50 MB. The paid Starter and Pro plans raise the limit to 64 GB and add batch processing, a priority queue and an ad-free experience. Pro adds Zapier and Make automation, a desktop app and 5x AI usage compared with Starter. Free use shows ads.

PDF2Go lists no paid price on the pages we read, other than EUR 5 per additional user per month on any paid plan. A 14-day money-back guarantee applies to all paid plans, and paid apps are free for students and teachers for non-commercial education.

Processing is on PDF2Go's servers, with files stored in Europe. The tool page says "in your browser", but the same page describes uploads and server processing, so treat it as a hosted tool. You can download a file up to 10 times, the link is blocked after 24 hours, and files are physically deleted after at most 72 hours. The vendor says files are not used for AI training.

There is a separate api2convert REST API with SDKs for several languages, and extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Edge. The on-site rating for compress is 4.2/5 from 27,417 votes, which is the site's own rating, not a third party's.

Next to ToAny, PDF2Go has finer dpi control, apps, extensions and an API. It uploads files and keeps them for up to 72 hours.

Soda PDF is a registered trademark of Avanquest Software. Its online compress tool is the tightest free tier on this list: 2 files per day, each up to 3 MB. There is no account requirement and no watermark on the free compress tool.

That 3 MB cap is the main thing to weigh. A scanned document or a slide deck can easily pass it, and 2 files a day is not much for a batch. It offers two levels: regular, with an estimated saving of 40%, and high, with a saving of up to 85%. Those are the vendor's estimates, not guarantees.

Files are uploaded to Soda's servers over TLS and are deleted from them within 24 hours, as stated on the merge page. The compress tool says a password-protected PDF must be unlocked first.

Soda PDF's pricing page lists Pro, Team and Business plans. Team covers 3 to 19 licences with a 10% discount per licence, and there is no perpetual licence. Dollar prices do not appear in the page source, where the buttons read "See prices", so we cannot state a price.

The vendor claims more than 425,000 users and 15 site languages. Trustpilot rates it 4.2 from 1,841 reviews. The web app runs on Mac, Linux, iOS and Android, and there is Windows deployment for organisations.

Against ToAny, Soda PDF's free compressor is far more restricted. ToAny takes files up to 400 MiB with no daily limit, and does not upload them.

pdfFiller belongs to airSlate, which also makes signNow and US Legal Forms and acquired DocHub in 2022. pdfFiller's first PDF Editor build was released to the public in 2008. The compressor is one feature of a document workspace, not a stand-alone utility.

A pdfFiller account is required to compress. The tool accepts a PDF up to 100 MB (1,500 pages), and other document types up to 25 MB. It offers three quality levels, High, Good and Low, and shows an estimated output size before you save. The vendor says there is no watermark on compressed PDFs.

Privacy needs care here. The page says the process "runs in your browser", but the document and its compressed copies are saved to your pdfFiller workspace. The page does not say whether bytes are uploaded to servers, so treat it as account-based storage rather than private local processing. Files stay saved and synced in your account, with no retention window stated.

The homepage offers a free 30-day trial. The permanent free-tier limits and the price could not be retrieved, because the payment page redirects to a login, so we cannot state a price.

On reputation, the homepage claims 4.6/5 on 797+ G2 reviews and 56 million users. The vendor's schema.org markup shows 4.6 from 19,776 reviews, with no platform named. The iOS app is rated 4.5 from 9,087 ratings on the App Store, and free iOS and Android apps are available. The vendor lists security claims of SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and HIPAA compliance.

Where ToAny trails, pdfFiller wins on workspace features and mobile apps. It requires an account and stores your files.