Compress a PDF to 500KB
College admission portals and some application forms, like the ones below, accept documents of up to 500 KB, which is enough for one or two scanned pages without pushing the quality down far. Compress can open with 500 KB already chosen, pick the least lossy setting it predicts will fit, and show you the measured size of the result before you save it. It works in your browser and makes no promise about the size: a long scan will not fit, and it tells you when that happens.
Updated
What fits in 500 KB
- Scans of one or two pages. In our tests a one-page 300 DPI color scan fitted at the Recommended setting and a two-page one at Smallest file, so neither needed the extra steps target mode keeps below those.
- A phone photo of a page, which fitted with room to spare at the Recommended setting in our tests.
What may stay over 500 KB
- A long color scan. At the lowest setting each page of our test scans came to a little over 80 KB, so seven or more pages like them will not fit in 500 KB, and the more pages there are, the further Compress has to lower picture quality before that point.
- A text-only file whose size is in its embedded fonts, which Compress does not rebuild.
- Pages saved by a scanner in a lossless format rather than as JPEG, which Compress keeps as they are.
- A password-protected PDF, which Compress will not open.
More on this: Why PDF files get large.
If your PDF stays over 500 KB
Separate the documents the form uploads separately
The admission forms below list mark sheets and certificates as separate documents. Where yours does, Split PDF turns a combined scan into one file per document, and each file then has its own 500 KB.
Leave out blank and duplicate pages
A blank reverse side scanned along with the front still counts as a full page of picture. Delete PDF pages removes it before you compress.
Rescan as JPEG
If Compress barely changes your scan, the scanning app may have stored its pages losslessly. Switch the app to JPEG, or to a PDF made of JPEG pages, scan again, and compress the new file.
Forms that ask for 500 KB
Quoted from the instructions each publisher puts out, on the date shown. Admission rounds reopen every year and their limits can move with them, so read your form's current instructions too.
| Form | Documents | Limit | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goa Directorate of Higher Education — UG admissions 2026–27 | SSC and HSSC mark sheets, and an identity document such as Aadhaar or a voter ID | PDF, JPEG, JPG or PNG, from 10 KB to 500 KB | dhe.goa.gov.inread September 30, 2026 |
| NIT Sikkim — M.Tech admission 2026 | Mark sheets and degree certificates, identity proof, and category or disability certificates | JPEG, JPG or PDF, from 10 KB to 500 KB | nitsikkim.ac.inread September 30, 2026 |
| OCI card application — High Commission of India, Wellington | Each category of supporting document, uploaded as one file | PDF, no more than 500 KB | www.hciwellington.gov.inread September 30, 2026 |
A different size
Aiming for a different size? Each of these has its own page.
- Compress a PDF to 20KB
- Compress a PDF to 50KB
- Compress a PDF to 100KB
- Compress a PDF to 200KB
- Compress a PDF to 300KB
- Compress a PDF to 1MB
- Compress a PDF to 2MB
If you have no set size to hit, open Compress PDF without a target and choose from the sizes it offers for your file.
Compress runs in your browser. Your PDF is not uploaded, there is no account, and no watermark is added to the smaller copy.