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Compress a PDF to 100 KB

A hundred kilobytes is the most commonly asked-for PDF limit on Indian recruitment and admission portals, and answering it honestly is the reason this site exists. Pick your file and the page searches for the largest, clearest version of your document that still fits under 100,000 bytes.

PDF or PDF

Nothing uploadedNo sign-upNo watermarkHow that works

How to compress a PDF to 100 KB

  1. Tap Choose your PDF and pick the document the portal turned down.
  2. Leave the target at 100 KB and tap Compress to 100 KB.
  3. Watch the pages go past — a long scan takes longer than a single sheet.
  4. Check the finished size, then save it.

Why the same 100 KB target behaves so differently

The number is a limit on the whole document, so it is divided between however many pages you brought. Two scanned pages get about fifty kilobytes each and come out looking fine. Fifteen pages get under seven kilobytes each, which is not enough to keep small print legible, and the tool will land above the cap and say so rather than pretend otherwise.

What is on the pages matters as much as how many there are. A photocopy of typed text compresses much further than a colour photograph of the same sheet, because there are only two tones in it. Where you can choose how a document is scanned, black and white at 200 to 300 DPI is the setting that makes a hundred kilobytes comfortable.

It weighs the real file, not an estimate

Guessing the size of a PDF from the size of its parts is close but never exact, and "close" is what produces a 104 KB file against a 100 KB cap. Here the last step writes the document out for real and measures it. If that comes out over, it drops a rung and writes it again, so what you are handed is a file somebody has actually weighed.

The aim sits about ten per cent under the number in the URL, and that is deliberate too. Some portals count a kilobyte as 1,024 bytes and some as 1,000, so a file at 99,900 bytes passes one and fails the other. Landing near 90,000 clears both, and the page prints the exact figure it reached.

Questions

The portal still says my file is too big. Why?
Check that you are uploading the compressed copy and not the original sitting next to it in your downloads, and check whether the form wants 100 KB or 100 KiB. The size shown here is the true byte count of the file it just made.
Can I set a number that is not 100 KB?
Yes. The target on this page can be edited to any figure, and there are pages already set to 50, 200, 300 and 500 KB if one of those matches what your form asks for.
Will my signature and the office stamps survive?
They are re-encoded along with everything else on the page, so an inked signature stays visible while a faint pencil one can go soft. Look at the result before uploading, and if it has suffered, try the 200 KB page instead.
Does compressing take my name out of the file?
Whenever a smaller file is produced the document is written out fresh, so the metadata packet goes and the author and creation-date fields go with it, unless you keep them under Advanced. What is printed on your pages is untouched — this removes file properties, not content.

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