Compress PDF for email — free, instant
Shrink your PDF to fit any email provider's attachment limit. Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, corporate filters — all covered. Free, no signup.
Every email provider has a different attachment cap. Gmail allows 25MB. Outlook.com is 20MB. Yahoo Mail is 25MB. Corporate Outlook/Exchange varies — typical defaults are 10MB but admins often lower it to 5MB or even 2MB for security. AOL, ProtonMail, and Fastmail each have their own limits. Sending one PDF that works across all of them means compressing aggressively up front.
PDFOnly's compressor handles email prep in one click. Recommended preset works for most documents under 50 pages — typically lands under 5MB, which clears every common email provider. For longer or image-heavy PDFs, switch to High to clear even strict 2MB corporate limits. Compression is lossless on text (always sharp) and downsampling-based on images (visible only at high zoom).
Frequently asked questions
What size should I aim for to be safe?
Under 5MB clears 95% of email systems. Under 2MB clears effectively all of them, including the strictest corporate filters. If you don't know the recipient's provider, default to under 5MB.
Should I use Gmail's 'Send via Drive' instead?
Sometimes — it works around the size cap but requires the recipient to click a download link. Many recipients miss those clicks or distrust them as phishing. Sending the actual file as an attachment (after compressing) is usually the better experience.
Why do my PDFs come out so big in the first place?
Modern phones and scanners capture at 300+ DPI by default — way more detail than needed for screen viewing. A 10-page scanned document at 300 DPI is typically 30-50MB; the same content at 150 DPI is under 5MB with no visible difference.