Compress PDF to 25 MB
Stay under Gmail's 25 MB cap so your PDF arrives as an attachment, not a Drive link.
Drop files or a folder here
or click to browse · paste from clipboard
Accepts .PDF · Up to 1,000 files
How it works
Drop your files
Drag and drop, or click to browse PDF files. For larger files over 5 MB, do smaller batches of 5 to 10. For smaller files, you can do batches of up to 250.
Click Compress
Everything runs in your browser via WebAssembly. Compression happens locally — no server involved.
Download
Download files individually or grab all at once as a ZIP.
Gmail has a 25 MB attachment limit. If you attach a PDF above this threshold, it will upload it to Google Drive and convert it to a Google Drive link. So the recipient has to be logged into their Google account and have permission from you to open that PDF file. There are several issues here. First, the sender should remember to give the recipient(s) permission to access the file; otherwise, they can’t open or view it.
Compressing it to 25 MB removes this issue, allowing you to send the PDF as an attachment, not a Google Drive link. If you have a 300+ MB high-resolution, layered PDF document you want to share, emailing it would be out of the question. Sending it as a Google Drive link is doable, but opening a 300 MB PDF file on a smartphone will be laggy. A better option would be to compress it to a more manageable size. 25 MB is doable. The compressor lowers the image resolution, removes elements that aren’t used, and goes through several cycles until the target size is reached. The result will be a readable PDF file with slightly degraded image quality, but still readable.
When do you need 25 MB?
- Emailing large PDFs as Gmail attachments. PDF files containing high-resolution scans of books, reports, research publications, and reference manuals can easily exceed 200MB in size. Once compressed to a more reasonable 25MB file size, you can email it as an attachment rather than a Cloud link that requires the right permissions.
- The high-resolution scans of books, reports, research papers, and reference manuals are typically large files up to 200MB in size. Compressing them to about 25MB allows you to store them locally without relying as heavily on cloud storage.
- Bundled PDFs for emailing instead of uploading to cloud storage. If you need to send a contract, an audit package, a project handover, or due-diligence reports, then it is better to send these as attachments rather than as cloud links.
Frequently asked questions
As shared Drive links, these require the recipient to be signed into a Google account and to have the appropriate access permissions. Many recipients (e.g. in government offices, in legal environments, with corporate email addresses) don’t have Google accounts or won’t click on links to Google Drive from strangers. A real attachment opens in one click and doesn’t require the recipient to sign in.
Yes, Google Workspace also has a 25 MB limit for attachments. However, for users within your domain, Shared Drive links can be easier to access than regular attachments. For external users, the difference between an attachment and a link is big, though.
Note: Gmail will not alter or manipulate the content of your attachment. Only file size will be checked. This page contains a PDF compressor that reduces the quality of images and strips out metadata in order to shrink down a PDF to under 25 MB for attachment to Gmail.
Gmail uses binary megabytes (1 MB = 1,048,576 bytes), so 26,214,400 bytes is the limit. We set the compressor to 24.5 MB (25,690,112 bytes) to stay under the limit, even after minor re-encoding.
Nope. ConvertYard can’t read or write encrypted PDF files. You’ll need to unlock the PDF to remove the password, then use this tool to compress.
Target-size mode will perform compression up to 6 passes (for example, structural cleanup in one pass and then decreasing image quality from 80% down to 30% in subsequent passes) until the target size is reached. Use this option if you need a strict number requirement (e.g. email attachment or government portal).
No. ConvertYard cannot read or write encrypted PDFs. You must first use the Unlock PDF tool to remove the PDF password before you can use this tool to compress it.
Target-size mode will run the compression up to six passes automatically. It first runs the structural cleanup pass, then slowly lowers image quality from 80 to 30%, only stopping when the target size is met. Use this option if you have a hard limit (for example, an email attachment or a government portal).