The result appears as a card headed “Under 300 KB” and tagged “Exact size”, showing the real size and the setting used — “images at 120 DPI, quality 58” or “lossless — every pixel identical”. Text is never rasterised, so a CV stays sharp and selectable. Only the last three settings drop colour; if yours ends in “grayscale” and the form wants a colour passport page, upload fewer pages — a single data page, taken out with Extract pages, leaves its picture more room to keep its colour. When nothing reaches 300 KB, Bindery says the smallest size the file gets and why — text, fonts and structure alone are over the limit, or the pictures still weigh too much at the lowest setting — and offers “Split into parts under 300 KB”. If the portal also refuses locked files, fillable fields or scripts, Upload-ready’s “Exam or ID form” destination checks those too — set its 200 KB starting limit to 300 KB. The file never leaves your browser.
How it works
- Drop your PDF — this page opens Compress with 300 KB already set as the limit
- Bindery measures real settings on your device and selects the highest-quality file at or under 300 KB
- Press “Compress to … KB →” with the “Under 300 KB” card selected, then download — or use “Split into parts under 300 KB” if the card says it cannot fit whole
Questions people ask
Will a scanned passport page or a two-page CV with a photo fit under 300 KB?
Usually there is room for either, and the card shows the measured size for your file. For a CV, the lossless cleanup is tried first; if that alone brings it under 300 KB, the photo is kept pixel for pixel. A scanned passport page is essentially one picture, so the search looks for the sharpest setting that fits the whole limit and says so if none does, with the smallest size it reaches and why. Either way, open the result at 200% before uploading and check that the photo, any signature and the two machine-readable lines at the foot of the passport page are still clear.
Is Bindery’s 300 KB the same as the portal’s 300 KB?
Bindery counts a kilobyte as 1,000 bytes, so this limit is 300,000 bytes. A portal that counts 1,024 bytes to the kilobyte allows 307,200, so a file that fits here fits there as well. If the form states a different figure, change the size box: “250 KB” and “0.25 MB” both work, and a bare number above 50 — typing just 290, say — is read as kilobytes. The limit applies to the file you download: on the free plan the “Made with Bindery” line is added before the final size check, and the search runs again with less room if it tips the file over. The search itself does not use one of your three daily jobs.
My application wants all my documents in one PDF under 300 KB — what if it won’t fit?
Then Bindery tells you instead of pretending: the card reads “Cannot fit whole”, and the note gives the smallest size the file reaches and whether it is the text, fonts and structure or the pictures that keep it over. “Split into parts under 300 KB” only helps if the portal accepts several files. If it takes a single upload, put less in it — keep just the pages the form asks for with Extract pages, or delete the rest in Organize pages — then compress the shorter file under 300 KB again. Each of these runs on your device.