Only embedded images are resampled and re-encoded, and only when the result is at least 8% smaller; text is never rasterized, duplicated streams are stored once, and compressing twice never degrades a file. The document does not leave the browser tab, which is the point for the files people compress most — statements, contracts, records — and the original on your disk stays as it was. Heavy jobs run in a background worker and can be cancelled without counting against your day. Install Bindery from the Edge or Chrome menu and it works offline and saves results straight to a folder you choose.
How it works
- Open Bindery in Edge, Chrome or Firefox and drop the PDF into Compress
- Compare the three computed sizes with your target
- Download the level that fits; check small text at 200% zoom
Questions people ask
Why can’t Acrobat Reader compress for free?
Reader is a viewer; compression is part of the paid Acrobat product. Bindery’s compressor is free for all users, runs on your PC rather than a server, and shows the computed size of each level before you commit — something the paid tools generally do not.
Which level should I choose?
The largest one that fits your target. Balanced is recommended: 150 DPI images look the same at everyday zoom and on an office printer. Email & web is for screen-only copies. Print cleanup is lossless and suits archival masters or files that only had structural redundancy to remove.
What about a PDF over 200 MB?
Compression needs the whole file in memory, and a guard at intake tells you what your PC can hold. Above 200 MB Bindery opens the file in big-file mode, which streams Split and Extract; split the document into parts there, then compress each part.