thecompressjpeg

Frequently asked questions

Questions about the site itself — limits, formats, privacy and what we deliberately do not do. Each tool page has its own FAQ covering that specific job.

The quick answers

Cost
Free. No account, no trial, no paid tier.
File size limit
None set by us. Bounded by your device's memory.
Batch limit
None. No daily quota either.
Files uploaded
Never. Processing happens in your browser.
Retention
Nothing to retain — no file is ever received.
Watermark
Never.
Supported in
Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, desktop and mobile.
Not supported
HEIC, RAW, TIFF, animated GIF, AVIF output.

In more detail

Limits, and why there are so few

There is no cap on file size, on how many files you add, or on how often you come back. That is not generosity — it is a consequence of the architecture. Your device does the work, so processing costs us nothing per image and there is no reason to meter it.

The one real limit is your device's memory. Each image is held uncompressed while it is processed, and a 12-megapixel photograph occupies roughly 48 MB as raw pixels regardless of how small the file on disk is. Very large batches of very large images can therefore exhaust a browser tab, most noticeably on phones. If a batch stalls, split it in half — nothing was uploaded, so nothing is lost.

What is supported, and what is not

Fully supported
JPEG, PNG and WebP — reading and writing, in any combination.
Not supported: HEIC and RAW
Browsers cannot decode them. Convert on a Mac with Preview, or with desktop software.
Not supported: TIFF
No browser decodes it. Use ImageMagick, Photoshop or GIMP.
Not supported: AVIF and JPEG XL output
Browsers cannot write them, and a canvas asked for an unsupported format silently returns a PNG. We disable formats your browser cannot genuinely produce rather than hand you a mislabelled file.
Not supported: animation
A canvas decodes only the first frame, so an animated file would come back as a still image. Use ffmpeg or gifsicle.

Each of those has a page explaining the limitation in full rather than a missing menu item.

Privacy, in one paragraph

Your files are never transmitted, so there is no retention period, no deletion policy and nothing that could be requested from us. The site keeps ordinary server logs and stores contact form messages so we can reply; neither touches your images. Verify the rest yourself: load a tool page, disconnect from the network, and compress something.

Things we deliberately do not do

  • No OCR. Nothing here reads text out of an image.
  • No AI upscaling. No detail is invented. Enlarging an image makes it soft, and we do not pretend otherwise.
  • No cloud storage or sync. There is nowhere to save anything, by design.
  • No PDF editing. The PDF tool builds a new document from images; it does not open, merge or split existing PDFs.
  • No collaboration. The document editor is single-user and single-device.
  • No decorative controls. Every setting changes the output. A progressive-JPEG toggle was removed during development because a browser canvas gives no control over it — a switch that did nothing would have been worse than its absence.

Try it yourself

Everything below runs in your browser, so you can test any of this on your own files without uploading them.

  • Compress JPEG

    Shrink JPG and JPEG photographs with a quality slider or an exact target size.

    Open the tool

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Every answer below is present in the page source, expanded, so it can be read without opening anything.

Is it really free, with no catch?

Yes. No account, no trial, no daily quota, no watermark, and no feature held back behind a paid tier that does not exist. Hosting is covered by advertising placed below the tool, never above it.

What is the maximum file size?

There is no limit set by this site. In practice your device's memory is the ceiling, because each image is held uncompressed while it is processed. Very large files can exhaust a browser tab, particularly on a phone.

How many images can I compress at once?

As many as you like — there is no batch cap and no daily quota. Files are processed in parallel across Web Workers and can be downloaded together as a ZIP.

Which formats are supported?

JPEG, PNG and WebP for both input and output. HEIC, RAW, TIFF and animated files are not, because browsers cannot decode them — each has a page explaining why rather than a menu item that fails.

How long do you keep my files?

We never receive them, so there is nothing to keep. Your file is read from your own disk into the browser tab, processed there, and written back. No copy exists anywhere else at any point.

Do I need to create an account?

No, and there is no account system to create one in. Nothing on this site is gated.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. Any current version of Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Edge on Android or iOS runs the same encoder as the desktop browsers. Large batches are slower on a phone because the work is bound by the device's processor.

Does it work offline?

Once the page has loaded, yes. That is the clearest demonstration that nothing is being uploaded — disconnect from the network and compress an image anyway.

Will there ever be a paid version?

There are no plans for one. Adding a paid tier would mean deliberately withholding something that already works, and the economics do not require it — your device does the processing, so usage costs us nothing.

Can I use the output commercially?

Yes. The output is your image and nothing else — no watermark, no branding, no licence conditions from us. What you may do with the image depends on your own rights to it.

From the blog

Related reading

Longer, more practical guides from the blog.

  • Practical Guides

    How to Compress Images for a Website Without Wrecking Them

    Resize before you compress. Measured on one photograph: half the width at quality 80 produced a 16.4 KB file, while full width at quality 40 produced 20.6 KB and looked far worse. The order of operations matters more than the settings.

    8 min read

  • Image Compression

    JPEG Quality Settings Explained: What the Number Actually Means

    Quality 80 is not 80% of anything. It is an index into a quantisation table. Measured on one photograph: dropping from 100 to 90 removes 77% of the file and 4.2 dB of fidelity; dropping from 40 to 30 removes 17% and costs almost as much.

    8 min read

  • Practical Guides

    How to Strip EXIF Data From Photos, and What Breaks When You Do

    A photograph from a phone can carry the coordinates of the place it was taken, the camera serial number and the exact timestamp. Removing that data is straightforward. Removing it carelessly rotates your photos sideways.

    9 min read