Compress PDF to 5MB for e-Filing Portal (High Court, NCLAT, ITAT)
Scanned petition bundles regularly hit 15-30MB. E-filing portals reject anything over 5MB. Here's how to compress without losing readability — on your own device.
The Problem Every Litigator Faces
You've merged 25 annexures, a 40-page petition, three affidavits, and a vakalatnama into a single filing PDF. The scanner produced high-resolution images. The result: a 28MB PDF.
The Delhi High Court e-filing portal's upload limit: 10MB. The Supreme Court ICMS:5MB. NCLAT: 5MB. Your filing is dead on arrival.
⚠️ The Wrong Way
- • Re-scanning at lower DPI — destroys legibility, court may reject
- • Uploading to iLovePDF/Smallpdf — sends client documents to EU servers
- • Splitting into multiple PDFs — violates single-filing requirement
- • Reducing to grayscale manually — often makes stamps/seals illegible
The Right Way: Client-Side Compression
Step 1: Open the Compress Tool
Go to PDF Compress. Drop your merged filing PDF. Nothing is uploaded — processing runs in your browser.
Step 2: Choose Compression Level
Select the target quality. For court filings with scanned documents:
Step 3: Download Compressed PDF
Click "Compress" and download. Verify the file is under the portal limit. If it's still too large, try the next compression level — some portals accept slightly lossy scans as long as text remains readable.
How to Prevent Bloated PDFs in the First Place
Scan at 200-300 DPI, not 600
300 DPI is the sweet spot for courthouse scanners. 600 DPI doubles file size with no visible quality gain on printed court documents.
Use grayscale for text documents
Petitions, affidavits, and written submissions don't need colour. Grayscale cuts size by 60%.
Keep colour only for stamps & seals
Scan the notarisation/stamp pages separately at 300 DPI colour, rest in grayscale.
OCR before merging
OCR'd PDFs compress better because the text layer is stored as vectors, not raster images.
Portal Size Limits Reference
| Portal | Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Supreme Court ICMS | 5 MB | Per document; total bundle may have separate limit |
| Delhi HC | 10 MB | Single PDF for entire filing |
| Bombay HC | 5 MB | Searchable PDF mandatory |
| NCLAT | 5 MB | Strict — portal times out on larger files |
| ITAT | 10 MB | PDF only, no password protection |
| DRT / DRAT | 5 MB | Some benches accept 10MB |
| NCLT | 10 MB | Per application |
| CAT | 5 MB | Including all annexures |
Compress your filing to under 5MB in 10 seconds.
No upload, no sign-up, works offline. Your court documents never leave your device.