Govt portals · Universities · Job forms
Compress a PDF to 200 KB.
200 KB is the most common PDF ceiling on Indian application portals. UnderKB re-encodes your pages in a local worker until the file lands under it — your document never leaves the tab.
- 100% client-side
- Nothing is uploaded
- No account
- Canvas / WebAssembly on your device
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Why your PDF is 2 MB when it "should be small"
Four things inflate scanned PDFs, and none of them are visible on the page:
- Scanner DPI. Phone scan apps default to 300–600 DPI. A4 at 600 DPI colour produces 4–8× the pixels of 150 DPI — and pixels are the budget.
- PNG inside the PDF. Many apps wrap lossless PNG images in a PDF container. The same page as JPEG quality 70 is roughly a tenth of the size.
- Colour on documents that do not need it. Marksheets and certificates in greyscale keep every glyph legible at a fraction of the bytes.
- Embedded fonts and layers. Editing layers and full font subsets can add hundreds of KB to a one-page file. Flattening removes them.
What actually fits in 200 KB
| Document | Fits 200 KB? | Settings that work |
|---|---|---|
| One A4 scan, greyscale | Yes, comfortably | ≈150 DPI, quality search finds the floor |
| One A4 scan, colour | Yes | 150–200 DPI; quality search first, dimensions last |
| Text-born PDF, 1–10 pages (letter, invoice) | Yes, easily | Rasterize at 150 DPI; text stays razor-sharp |
| Passport-size photo sheet / signature page | Yes | Even 100 KB usually works — try the 100 KB preset |
| 5+ page colour scan | Usually not | Split pages, go greyscale, or use 300 KB |
| Digitally signed PDF | Never | Re-encoding voids the signature — compress before signing |
The e-Visa passport-page scan allows up to 300 KB; many state portals, university forms and job applications stop at 200 KB. Targeting 200 KB keeps one file valid for both.
The signed-PDF trap
A digital signature (DSC) or an e-sign covers the exact byte sequence of the PDF. Compressing, flattening or re-saving afterwards breaks the cryptographic seal, and the portal will reject the file as tampered. Order of operations: compress first, sign second. If your signed PDF is over the cap, re-compress the unsigned original and re-apply the signature.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get a PDF under 200 KB without making it unreadable?
Search for the quality floor, not the ceiling. UnderKB rasterizes each page in a local worker and binary-searches DPI and JPEG quality until the rebuilt PDF lands under 200 KB. Text and line art stay crisp around 150–200 DPI; if the output looks muddy, the source scan was already poor.
Can I compress a digitally signed PDF to 200 KB?
No — and you should not. A digital signature covers the exact bytes of the file; any re-encoding, including compression, invalidates it. Compress the PDF first, then apply the signature or DSC to the compressed file.
Is 200 KB enough for a scanned certificate or marksheet?
For one A4 page, yes: a greyscale scan at 150 DPI typically lands between 80 KB and 180 KB. Multi-page colour scans need either a higher cap (the 300 KB page), page splitting, or a greyscale pass.
Does compression make my PDF image-only instead of text?
Scanned PDFs were already images — nothing is lost. Text-born PDFs are rasterized page by page, so selectable text becomes image text. If you need a searchable PDF, keep the original and upload the compressed copy only where the portal demands the cap.
What is the difference between 200 KB and 300 KB for India e-Visa?
The e-Visa passport-page scan accepts up to 300 KB, and the photo accepts 10–300 KB JPEG. The 200 KB target is the stricter ceiling used by many state portals and university forms; if your portal allows 300 KB, use the 300 KB preset for more quality headroom.