How to reduce a PDF's size for an online application's upload limit

Updated: 2026-10-29

Job sites, university admissions, visa and benefits portals often cap each file at 1, 2 or 5 MB. Then your scanned passport or transcript comes in at 8 MB and the form refuses it. Here's how to get under the limit and still have a document the reviewer can read.

First, read the limit carefully

A minute with the portal's instructions can save several attempts. Look for three things:

Per file or in total? "Max 2 MB" may mean each upload or all your documents together. A total limit changes how much each file can use.
One slot or several? If there are separate slots for each page or document, splitting a big PDF may be easier than squeezing it.
What the file must contain. Some ask for color scans, both sides of an ID, or every page of a statement. Shrinking is fine; leaving out required pages isn't.

Aim a little below the limit. A file that's 1.98 MB for a 2 MB limit can still be rejected, because some sites count a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes and others as 1,048,576.

Compress the PDF

Oversized application documents are almost always scans or phone photos. Each page is a large image, and images can be made much smaller while staying readable.

Open Compress PDF and drop the file on the page.
Start with Medium (110 DPI). It keeps normal print sharp on screen.
Click Compress. The result shows the size before and after.
Still too big? Choose Strong (72 DPI), which gives the smallest file, and click Compress again. It starts from your original file again, not from the first result.
Open the result and zoom in on the small print before you upload it.

Compression happens on your device. For a passport, a payslip or a bank statement, that means the document isn't sent to yet another website on its way to the one that asked for it.

Compressing turns each page into an image, so the text can't be selected afterwards. That's fine for scans. For a resume or cover letter made in Word, don't compress it; see the last section instead.

Tactics when compression isn't enough

Remove pages nobody asked for. Blank backs, instruction pages and duplicate scans all count. Take them out with Delete PDF pages, then compress again.
Split across upload slots. If the portal lets you add several files, Split PDF can do it two ways: Extract pages with a range like 1-3, then again with 4-6, or Every N pages to cut the whole file into equal parts in one go. Those parts download together as one ZIP, so unzip it before you upload them. Name the parts clearly, for example "Transcript part 1 of 2".
Rescan with smaller settings. For uploads, 150–200 DPI is plenty for typed documents, and grayscale is much smaller than color. Only use color when the portal asks for it, or for stamps and photos that matter.
Crop before you scan or shoot. A photo of an ID card with half a desk around it wastes space. Crop it to the card in your phone's photo editor first.

Documents made from phone photos

A phone photo is often several megabytes on its own, so a PDF built from five of them can blow past any limit. Build the PDF first, then compress it:

Open JPG to PDF and add your photos. Use the arrows to put them in order.
Choose A4 or Letter as the page size so every page comes out the same size, and click Create PDF.
Drop the new PDF into Compress PDF and choose Medium, or Strong if needed.

iPhone photos in HEIC format need converting to JPG first, with HEIC to JPG.

Text documents: a different fix

A resume, cover letter or essay exported from Word or Google Docs is usually well under 1 MB. If yours is large, the cause is almost always a big picture inside it, like a high-resolution photo or logo. Shrink or compress that picture in your word processor and export the PDF again.

This keeps the text real, which matters: many employers' systems read the text of a resume automatically, and a resume that has been turned into images gives them nothing to read. On a Mac, Preview offers another route: File > Export, then choose Reduce File Size in the Quartz Filter menu. Check the result, because it can lower image quality a lot.