Government portals, visa applications, and many job boards cap PDF uploads at 1 MB. Text-heavy PDFs already sit near that limit, and scans routinely blow past it.
Compress PDF drops metadata, deduplicates fonts, and re-encodes embedded images so the file lands under 1 MB while staying legible for the reviewer.
How to use Compress PDF under 1 MB
- Open Compress PDF and drop the document you need to upload.
- Wait for the browser to report the new size — if it's already below 1 MB you're done.
- If the file is still over 1 MB, run Split PDF to remove blank pages, or re-scan color pages in black-and-white before compressing again.
- Upload the compressed PDF to the portal that enforces the 1 MB rule.
Tips that actually matter for this case
- Scan at 200 DPI grayscale for portal uploads — 300 DPI color scans are the single biggest reason PDFs balloon past 1 MB.
- Government portals almost always allow multi-page PDFs. If the tool asks for a signature and a photo separately, keep them as separate 1 MB uploads instead of one merged file.
- Rename the compressed file to something the portal accepts (no spaces, no special characters) before uploading.