Reduce a PDF to under 200 KB
200 KB is the point where the type of document really starts to matter: easy for text, hard for scans, impossible for a long image-heavy report.
Compress to Size — free and local
Takes your upload limit in KB or MB and finds the best quality that still fits under it.
When 200 KB is easy
Text-based PDFs from Word, LaTeX or Google Docs are already close: a five-page document often starts at 150–400 KB, so a light re-save with object streams and stripped metadata can land under 200 KB with zero visual change.
Forms and invoices with a logo or two behave similarly — the images are small and the text dominates.
When 200 KB is a hard trade
A scanned A4 page at 300 DPI is 1–3 MB. Getting 200 KB means roughly 15× compression: that is about 90–110 DPI at moderate JPEG quality, which is legible on screen and clearly soft in print.
Below about 72 DPI, small text stops being readable and a signature cannot be verified. If a form demands 200 KB for a multi-page scan, the practical answer is to submit fewer pages rather than a file nobody can read.
Questions
Will the text still be selectable?
No. Under a hard size limit the pages are rebuilt as images. If you need a searchable file AND a small size, those two goals conflict for scans.
Why does the tool sometimes stop above 200 KB?
Because below a certain resolution the result stops being a document anyone can read. It reports that honestly instead of producing an unreadable file.
Can I keep the original quality and just remove pages?
Yes — that is often the better fix. Split the PDF first, then compress the reduced document.
Related
SlimPDF runs every tool in your browser. No file is ever uploaded, stored or shared.