If you have ever tried to upload a document to a government exam portal and got the error "File size exceeds limit" — you are not alone. Thousands of Indian students face this problem every year during UPSC, SSC, IBPS, and Railway applications.
The good news: compressing a PDF takes less than 30 seconds. This guide tells you exactly what size is needed for each portal, and how to compress your PDF for free.
💡 Quick Answer: Most government portals in India accept PDFs under 200KB–500KB. Use the free PDF compressor at MyPDFBharat — no signup, no watermark, done in seconds.
Before compressing, know what size you need. Here are the official limits:
| Exam / Portal | Document Type | Size Limit |
|---|---|---|
| UPSC CSE / IFS | Photo | 300 KB |
| UPSC CSE / IFS | Signature | 300 KB |
| SSC CGL / CHSL | Photo + Signature | 50 KB – 100 KB |
| IBPS PO / Clerk | Documents | 500 KB |
| Railway RRB / NTPC | Photo + Signature | 40 KB – 100 KB |
| State PSC Portals | Marksheets, Certificates | 100 KB – 500 KB |
| SBI PO / Clerk | Documents | 500 KB |
| Income Tax Portal | Attachments | 2 MB |
| GST Portal | Supporting docs | 2 MB |
| DigiLocker | All documents | 1 MB |
Most people scan their documents using a phone camera app or scanner. These create very high-resolution images — which is good for clarity but results in large file sizes. A single scanned page can easily be 2–5 MB.
Government portals, however, require small files — often under 500 KB — because they have to store millions of documents from lakhs of applicants.
Visit mypdfbharat.com/compress-pdf — no signup needed, completely free.
Click the upload area or drag and drop your PDF. Supports up to 50MB files.
Select Low for maximum compression (best for SSC/Railway where size limit is under 100KB). Select Medium for UPSC, IBPS, bank forms.
Click Download and use the compressed file on the government portal. Done!
When scanning documents, set resolution to 150 DPI instead of 300 or 600 DPI. This alone reduces file size by 4x while keeping text readable for official purposes.
For documents like marksheets, certificates, and ID proof, scan in black and white (grayscale) instead of colour. Black and white PDFs are 3–5x smaller than colour scans.
Only include the specific pages required by the portal. Use the compress tool after trimming unnecessary pages.
If your PDF is a scanned document at very high resolution, try compressing on Low setting which uses maximum compression. For text-only PDFs, the size reduction is limited — this is a property of the PDF format itself, not a limitation of any tool.
If you need to reduce a multi-page document drastically, consider splitting it into individual pages and submitting only the required one.
No signup. No watermark. Works on mobile. Your file is deleted after 1 hour.
Compress PDF Free →No. Text in PDFs is stored as vectors, not images — compression does not blur text. Only embedded images may become slightly lower resolution, which is acceptable for official submissions.
Yes. All files are processed securely and automatically deleted after 1 hour. We never read, share, or store your documents permanently.
Yes. MyPDFBharat works on all mobile browsers — Android and iPhone. No app installation needed.
This rarely happens. If it does, try re-compressing using the High quality setting which is gentler. The PDF structure remains valid after compression.