About 1MB Compress
1MB Compress is a set of free, browser-based file tools — image, PDF, video, audio, GIF, and archive compression — built and maintained by a single independent developer. There is no company behind it, no venture funding, and no data-collection business model. It is a side project that grew into a full toolset because the original problem (making a photo small enough for a form that capped uploads at 1 MB) turned out to be one a lot of people run into.
Why this exists
Most "free" compression tools online work by uploading your file to a server, processing it there, and sending back a result — which means your photos, PDFs, and videos pass through infrastructure you have no visibility into, sometimes get logged, and occasionally get retained. 1MB Compress was built to remove that step entirely. Every tool on this site runs the compression in your browser, on your device, using your CPU — your file is never transmitted anywhere.
How "nothing is uploaded" actually works
This isn't a marketing claim — it's how the code is structured, and it's checkable in your browser's network tab. Image compression uses the Canvas API to re-encode JPEG/PNG/WebP directly in memory. PDF tools (merge, split, watermark, page numbers, and more) run on pdf-lib, a JavaScript PDF library that reads and writes PDF byte streams without a server round-trip. Video and GIF compression use ffmpeg.wasm — a WebAssembly build of the real FFmpeg encoder — running inside a Web Worker so the UI stays responsive while a multi-hundred-megabyte video is transcoded entirely client-side. Archive tools (ZIP, TAR, TAR.GZ, RAR, 7Z) use libarchive compiled to WebAssembly for the same reason. If you disconnect from the internet after the page has loaded, every tool still works — that's the practical test of a client-side architecture.
What that architecture trades away
Running everything locally has real costs, and it's worth being upfront about them. Large video files can be slow to process on older phones and low-power laptops, because the encoder is competing with the rest of the page for CPU and memory instead of running on a server with dedicated hardware. WebAssembly-based video and archive tools need to download an engine (tens of megabytes) the first time you use them. And because there's no server, there's no cloud history, no account, and no way to resume a job if you close the tab midway through — the tradeoff for privacy is that the browser tab is the only place the work happens.
How the site is funded
1MB Compress is funded by display advertising, shown only after you've completed a compression — not before, and not while you're still deciding which tool to use. There is no premium tier, no paywall, and no email capture required to download your file. Ads are the only revenue source, which is also why keeping the actual tools fast, accurate, and free matters more than growing a feature list nobody asked for.
What this site does not do
It does not upload, store, or view your files — there is no backend that receives file contents, by design, not by policy. It does not require sign-up. It does not sell data, because it does not collect the kind of data that would be worth selling. It is not affiliated with Adobe, Google, Discord, or any platform referenced on tool pages that describe size limits for those services — those pages exist to help you hit a known limit, not because of a partnership.
Feedback and bug reports
If a tool produces a bad result, crashes on a specific file, or a claim on this site turns out to be wrong, that's useful to know. The Contact page has an email address and a short form — both reach the same inbox, and reports that include the file type and approximate size get fixed fastest.