Most online application portals, exam registrations, scholarships, recruitment and government services, set a strict upload limit, often somewhere between 100 KB and 2 MB. A document scanned on a phone can easily be 5–15 MB, so it gets rejected. Compressing it properly fixes this without making it unreadable.
Why scanned PDFs are so large
A scanned page is really a photograph. Phone cameras capture far more detail than a form needs, and many scanner apps save every page at full resolution. Text-based PDFs made on a computer are usually small already; it is the photographed pages that need shrinking.
Pick the right target size
- Read the portal's instructions and note the exact maximum size.
- Aim about 10% below it, because some portals count sizes slightly differently.
- Use PDF Compress and enter your target in KB. It reduces image quality step by step until the file fits.
Keep it readable
- Check every page after compressing, especially small print, stamps and signatures.
- If text becomes blurry, try converting to grayscale first with PDF Grayscale. Removing colour saves a lot of space while keeping text sharp.
- Remove pages the form doesn't need with PDF Splitter. Fewer pages means a smaller file.
- Crop away dark table edges and empty margins before scanning, they add size and make documents look untidy.
If it still won't fit
Some very tight limits (under 100 KB for several pages) are hard to reach with photographs. Rescan in better light at a lower resolution, scan one page at a time, or ask whether the portal accepts separate files for each page.
Your file is processed in your browser, so the document does not need to be uploaded to our server to be compressed.