Compress JPG Online — Free, No Signup
Compress JPG online in seconds. Drop a photo, move one slider, download a smaller JPEG that still looks like the original. The work happens inside your browser, so the file never leaves your device and there is no signup, no watermark, and no queue.
How to do it
- Drop your JPG onto the upload box, or click it to pick a file.
- Set the quality slider — 70 is the sweet spot for web use and usually cuts 60–80% off the file.
- Check the before and after sizes shown under the preview.
- Download the compressed JPG. The original on your disk is untouched.
What JPEG compression actually throws away
JPEG is lossy by design. It converts the image into frequency components and discards the high-frequency detail your eye is worst at noticing — mostly sensor noise and micro-texture, not edges or faces. That is why a 4 MB phone photo can drop to 700 KB and still look identical on a screen. The quality slider sets how aggressively that discarding happens. What it never removes is resolution: a 4032 x 3024 photo stays 4032 x 3024 no matter how far you drag the slider. If the pixel count is the problem rather than the file size, resize first and compress after.
Picking a quality number
Quality 70 is the default here because it is the point where most people stop being able to pick the compressed version out of a lineup. Expect a 12-megapixel photo to land between 350 and 550 KB. Quality 50 pushes the same photo under 300 KB and starts showing faint blocking in wide areas of flat colour like a clear sky. Quality 85 is worth it for product shots and anything with fine text baked into the image, and typically lands around 900 KB to 1.2 MB. Above 90 the file barely shrinks — you pay in bytes for detail nobody will see.
Where the savings come from
Photos taken in low light compress worst, because sensor noise is high-frequency detail spread across every pixel and the encoder has to spend bits describing randomness. A clean, well-lit shot of the same scene can be half the size at identical quality. Screenshots and graphics behave the opposite way: flat colour compresses beautifully, but sharp text edges pick up visible ringing, which is why PNG usually wins for interface captures. If your JPG is a photo of a document, expect a bigger file than a photo of a landscape at the same settings.
EXIF data is dropped
Re-encoding produces a fresh JPEG, and the metadata block does not survive the trip. GPS coordinates, camera model, serial number, lens, and timestamp all disappear. For most people that is a privacy win — a holiday photo posted to a forum no longer carries the exact coordinates of where it was taken. If you rely on EXIF for cataloguing, keep the original file and treat the compressed copy as an export, not a replacement.
Practical limits
The tool accepts JPG, PNG, and WebP up to 5 MB per file and always outputs JPEG, because JPEG is both the most compressible and the most universally supported format. Quality is clamped between 10 and 95. Because the output is JPEG, any transparency in a PNG or WebP source is flattened onto white — if you need the alpha channel kept, use the format converter instead. Everything runs on your own machine, so a large file compresses as fast as your device allows and nothing waits behind anyone else's upload.
Frequently asked questions
What quality should I pick?
70 for general use, 50 when file size matters more than the last few percent of fidelity, and 85 for product photography or anything containing fine text. Above 90 the file stops shrinking meaningfully.
Will the JPG keep its EXIF data?
No. Re-encoding writes a fresh JPEG without the metadata block, so GPS coordinates, camera model, and timestamps are all removed.
Why is my compressed file barely smaller?
Two common causes: the source was already compressed hard, so little redundancy is left, or the photo is noisy. Sensor noise is expensive to encode and low-light shots resist compression.
Can I compress a PNG here and get a PNG back?
No. The output is always JPEG. Feed a PNG in and you get a much smaller JPEG out, with any transparency flattened onto white.
Does compressing twice make the file even smaller?
Slightly, but each pass discards real detail permanently. Compress the original once at the quality you want rather than re-compressing an already-compressed file.
What is the largest file I can compress?
5 MB per file. If your photo is larger, resize it first — a 5000-pixel photo destined for a 1200-pixel column compresses far better after a resize anyway.