300KB is a frequently cited ceiling on visa applications, scholarship portals, and government upload forms, and it is noticeably more workable than the 100-200KB tier. Single-page documents compress comfortably, and even a 2-4 page scanned document can often fit at the Extreme preset.
Compress a PDF nowA 300KB budget gives Compress PDF meaningfully more to work with than the tighter caps below it — a short scanned application, a few ID pages, or a couple of supporting documents combined into one PDF will frequently land under 300KB without needing to be split first. Where it still falls short is dense, full-color scans across many pages, since image data accumulates quickly even with aggressive compression.
If the form wants a single PDF, make sure you are not including extra blank or duplicate pages — every additional page adds to the total before compression even starts.
Drop the file into the tool in your browser — processing happens on-device, so nothing is sent to a server first.
A 2-4 page scan will often clear 300KB at the Recommended preset; if it does not, Extreme trades a bit more image quality for a smaller file.
Check the output against the portal’s 300KB cap before submitting — if it is close but not quite there, try Extreme or trim to fewer pages.
It depends heavily on content, but a 2-4 page scanned document at the Extreme preset commonly lands under 300KB, while a single page fits comfortably at Recommended quality.
For a short application with a handful of scanned pages, yes — but if you are combining many supporting documents into one file, you may need to compress each document separately or split them across multiple uploads if the portal allows it.
Re-compressing an already-compressed PDF rarely helps and can sometimes make things worse — start from your original, uncompressed file each time you try a different preset for the best result.