Why portals reject your PDF — and what this page does
Every exam season, the same thing happens: the form is filled, the documents are scanned, and at the final step the portal refuses the upload — "file size exceeds 200 KB". A certificate scanned on a phone is usually 2–5 MB, ten times over the limit, and the deadline does not move.
This page is the fix, with the setup already done. It is the same compression engine as our general Compress PDF tool, with the target size preset to about 200 KB — the limit used by SSC, UPSC, RRB, IBPS, state PSC, bank and university admission portals. If your form asks for a different limit, 100 KB and 500 KB are in the same target menu.
How to compress a PDF to 200KB
Choose the PDF
Add the document the portal rejected — a certificate, mark sheet, ID proof or filled form.
Check the target
The target is already set to about 200 KB with the Balanced level. Change it only if your form's limit is different.
Compress and check the size
Press Compress PDF. The result panel reports the exact final size, so you know before downloading whether the portal will take it.
Download and upload
Save the compressed file and complete your form. If it is still slightly over, run it once more on Strong.
Which size limit do you actually have?
Limits vary by portal and by document, and the number in your notification or the form's instructions is the one that counts — check it before compressing. The common ones:
About 100 KB
Used for single certificates and short documents on several state-level and university portals. Choose "About 100 KB" in the target menu.
About 200 KB
The most common document limit on national exam and recruitment forms — the preset on this page.
About 500 KB
Used where several pages or a combined document are uploaded together. Choose "About 500 KB" in the target menu.
One warning: photo and signature limits on the same forms (often 20–50 KB) are for JPG images, not PDFs. For those, use the Photo & Signature Resizer instead.
An honest note: not every PDF can reach 200KB
Compression here is best-effort, not a guarantee, and this page will not pretend otherwise. A PDF created digitally (typed documents, downloaded statements) carries very little excess weight per page and usually reaches 200 KB easily. A scan is a photograph of every page, and photographs are heavy: a ten-page colour scan may reach 200 KB only at a quality where the text turns mushy. When that happens, the tool gives you the smallest sensible file and tells you the real size it achieved.
If your document stays too large, three things work better than compressing harder: split the file and upload only the pages the form asks for (our Split PDF tool does this), rescan at 150–200 DPI in greyscale instead of colour, or — for a document that mixes a few heavy pages with light ones — compress the heavy pages on their own.
What happens to your pages at these sizes
To reach portal sizes, the Balanced and Strong levels rebuild each page as a clear image inside the PDF. For certificates, mark sheets and forms this changes nothing that matters — the portal checks the file type and size, and the document reads exactly as before on screen and in print. The tradeoff is that the text is no longer selectable or searchable, because it is part of the page image.
If selectable text matters more than size — a contract you will keep editing, for example — use the general Compress PDF tool on its Light level, which keeps the document's structure and text intact and reduces what it safely can.
Compressing for a specific exam or portal
The routine is the same everywhere; what changes is which document hits the limit. A few patterns worth knowing:
SSC and State PSC forms
Educational certificates and category certificates are the usual casualties — multi-page scans uploaded as one PDF against a 200 KB-class limit. Compress the combined file first; if it stays over, most forms accept the certificates as separate uploads where the instructions allow it, which gives each file its own limit.
UPSC and other document-verification uploads
Here the set is bigger — degree, mark sheets, category and experience certificates — and the uploads often happen weeks after the application, under a fresh deadline. Compress each document on its own rather than one combined file: a single stubborn scan then holds up only itself.
RRB and IBPS (banking) forms
The document limits sit alongside strict photo and signature limits on the same form, which causes a common mix-up: candidates try to squeeze a JPG photo with a PDF tool, or a PDF certificate with a photo tool. Documents go here; photos and signatures go to the Photo & Signature Resizer, which is preset to those exact pixel and KB ranges.
Bank, KYC and admission portals
These limits are frequently 500 KB or 1 MB rather than 200 KB, and the documents are statements and proofs where legibility genuinely matters to the person reviewing them. Use the 500 KB target and Balanced level rather than forcing 200 KB you do not need.
Why a phone scan is 2–5 MB in the first place
A scanner app photographs your certificate the way it photographs everything: full colour, at the camera's resolution, including the table it was lying on. A single A4 page captured that way can carry 400–800 KB before it is even saved as a PDF. Six pages later, you have a 4 MB file and a 200 KB limit.
Two habits shrink the problem before compression starts. First, crop tightly to the page — the margins and background are pixels you pay for and the portal does not need. Second, if your scanning app offers a greyscale or "document" mode, use it: certificates are black text on white paper, and dropping colour typically cuts a scan's weight by half or more while keeping the text perfectly sharp. Compression then does the rest comfortably.
A typical case, start to finish
Take a common one: a 6-page colour scan of degree and mark sheets, 3.8 MB, against a 200 KB portal limit. On Balanced with the 200 KB target, a file like this typically lands somewhere near the limit — sometimes just under, sometimes a few dozen KB over, because the engine protects readability rather than forcing the number. One more pass on Strong usually brings it in, at a quality a certificate reviewer can still read without effort.
And if a file like this still refuses? The honest answer is that six colour pages in 200 KB means roughly 33 KB a page, which is beyond what any tool can do while keeping fine print legible. That is the moment to split: upload the degree and mark sheets as separate files if the form allows it, or rescan the set in greyscale — the same six pages, rescanned properly, often start under 900 KB and compress to 200 KB without a fight.
Private by design: nothing is uploaded
The documents people compress for forms are exactly the documents that should not sit on a stranger's server: Aadhaar and PAN copies, mark sheets, caste and income certificates, bank proofs. This tool runs entirely in your browser — the file is read, compressed and saved on your own phone or computer, and never travels anywhere. Close the tab and nothing remains.