Government portals, university applications and job sites all publish a hard limit — 100 KB, 200 KB, 2 MB — and reject anything above it without explaining what to change. There is no formula that turns a byte target into a quality setting, so this searches: it renders the pages at a quality, measures the result, and narrows the range from both ends until it finds the highest quality that still fits. If even the lowest quality overshoots, the pages are too large in pixels rather than too rich in detail, so the render scale drops and the search restarts.
Features
Renders, measures and narrows the range rather than guessing at a setting
Presets for the limits upload forms actually publish
Falls back to a lower render scale when quality alone cannot get there
Keeps the highest quality that still fits, not the smallest possible file
Shows every attempt it made, with the size each one produced
Says plainly when a target is below what a legible page costs
How to use the Compress PDF to Size
Drop the PDF onto the page
Type the target size, or pick the limit the form asks for
Let it search — each attempt re-renders every page, so a long document takes a while
Download the result, or split the document if it could not get there
198 KB at quality 41% and 1.50× scale — 97% smaller.
Six renders were needed to bracket the target from both sides.
Common errors & troubleshooting
The result is blurry. — That is what the target cost. Raise the limit if the form allows it, or split the document so each part has more bytes per page.
The text is no longer selectable. — Reaching an exact size means redrawing pages as images, and an image has no text layer. Run the result through text recognition if it must stay searchable.
It could not reach the target. — The per-page budget is below what a legible page costs. The message works out that figure for your document; splitting into parts is usually the answer.
The search takes a while. — Every attempt renders the whole document. A long document, or one with photographs on every page, needs several seconds per attempt and up to five attempts to bracket the target.
Frequently asked questions
Why not just pick a quality setting?
Because the same setting produces wildly different sizes on different documents. A photograph-heavy scan and a page of text compress nothing alike, so a fixed quality either overshoots the limit or throws away far more than it needed to.
Does the tool always hit the target exactly?
It gets under it, as close as the search can manage, and reports honestly when it cannot. It never claims a result it did not measure.
What is the difference from ordinary PDF compression?
Ordinary compression gives you a quality preset and whatever size results. This is the other way round: you give it the size and it finds the quality.
Will the pages still print acceptably?
At 500 KB and above, usually yes. At 100 KB across many pages, expect visible softness — that budget is roughly a small thumbnail per page.
Can I keep the text searchable?
Not through this route, because hitting an exact size requires rasterising. Try the standard compressor first; if it gets close enough, it leaves the text layer intact.
Related tools
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