Your son-in-law is choosing between two or three websites for shrinking PDFs at his small business and asks which one you have been using, since you and your granddaughter have been sorting out doctors' letters and forms together for months. It turns out there is more difference between them than the price alone suggests.
What is a PDF compressor, in plain words?
A PDF compressor is simply a tool that makes a document file smaller, usually by reducing the quality of any scanned pages inside it, so it fits within the size an email or a website will accept. The three names most people meet are Smallpdf, iLovePDF and Adobe Acrobat, and all three do the basic job well. Where they differ is how many times a day you can use them for free, and whether you can say exactly how small the file needs to be.
Which free tool is easiest?
| Tool | Free limit | What it costs to go further |
|---|---|---|
| Smallpdf | Two jobs a day | Pro, $15 a month or $108 a year |
| iLovePDF | More jobs a day, but with size caps | Premium, around $4 to $9 a month |
| Adobe Acrobat | One free try per tool, then sign in | Standard, around £14 a month |
| Jobbit PDF tool | No daily task limit | Free plan; paid plans for heavier use |
How to do it together in one afternoon
Try shrinking the same file on two of these together, so the difference is clear. On Jobbit's PDF tool, attach the file, say how small it needs to be, such as under 2 MB, and what it is for. Sign up once with an email address, no bank card needed, and the smaller file arrives in a chat within a minute or two, with both sizes shown so you can see exactly what changed.
What it costs (nothing) and what to watch out for
Jobbit's tool is free, using part of the free plan's daily credits, with no two-job limit to bump into. The thing worth knowing is that Adobe Acrobat is really a full document editor with signing and form tools built in, so paying fourteen pounds a month for it just to shrink a file is like buying a van to carry one parcel. The full comparison, with all six tools scored side by side, is here: Smallpdf versus iLovePDF versus Adobe Acrobat, from Jobbit.
