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Compress a PDF for WhatsApp

WhatsApp accepts documents up to one hundred megabytes, which sounds generous until you try to send a scanned contract. A twenty page document scanned at high resolution can exceed that comfortably, because every page is a photograph rather than text.

The limit is not the only reason to compress. Large documents are slow to send and slow to receive on mobile data, and recipients on limited plans frequently leave them undownloaded. A file of a few megabytes arrives immediately; one of eighty does not.

There is also a difference worth knowing between sending a PDF as a document and sending it any other way. Sent as a document, the file arrives intact. Photographs sent through the image picker are re-compressed by WhatsApp itself, sometimes heavily, which is why a scanned page shared as a photo often arrives unreadable. Converting pages into a PDF first and sending that as a document avoids the re-compression entirely.

Set a target size and the compressor works towards it by reducing the embedded images, which is where nearly all the weight in a scanned document sits. Text and vector content are left alone, so anything that was real text stays sharp.

Compression runs in your browser, which matters given what people actually send this way. Contracts, invoices, identity documents and medical letters are routine WhatsApp attachments, and none of them need a detour through someone else's server on the way.

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Frequently asked questions

What is the WhatsApp document size limit?

One hundred megabytes for documents. Scanned PDFs are the usual thing that exceeds it, since each page is effectively a photograph.

Why did my scanned page arrive blurry?

It was probably sent through the image picker rather than as a document. WhatsApp re-compresses images, sometimes heavily. Convert the pages to a PDF and send that as a document instead, and it arrives exactly as you sent it.

How small should I make it?

A few megabytes is comfortable for sending and receiving on mobile data. Going much smaller starts to soften scanned text, so it is worth checking a page before sending.

Will the text stay readable?

Real text is untouched by compression and stays perfectly sharp. Scanned text is part of an image and does soften as compression increases, which is why the result should be checked.

Is my document uploaded to compress it?

No. Compression happens in your browser, so contracts and identity documents are not transmitted anywhere on the way to being made smaller.