Compress Image to 20KB
Set to 20 KB already: drop an image in and it comes back at 20 KB or under, ready for the form that asked for it.
Drop an image to compress it to 20 KB
JPG, PNG or WebP, up to 25 MB. Compressed in your browser, never uploaded.
20 KB, hit exactly,
on the first try
Most compressors give you a percentage and let you find out afterwards whether the number worked. This one searches for the highest quality that still fits under 20 KB and tells you the size it landed on before you download.
Other sizes and settings
Same compressor, different target. Each one opens with its number already set.
Tools that pair well with this one
All free, all in your browser, no signup.
How to compress an image to 20 KB
Three steps, all of them in this browser tab. Nothing is uploaded to a server, so the 20 KB file you end up with never leaves your device.
Add your image
Drag a JPG, PNG or WebP onto the drop area above, or click to pick one. Files up to 25 MB are fine.
Confirm the 20 KB target
20 KB is already selected, so there is nothing to set. Type a different number if your form asked for one.
Compress and download
Press Compress, check the size it actually reached, and download. You will see the original and the 20 KB version side by side first.
The short answer
Why do upload forms ask for 20KB?
Because 20 KB is roughly what a passport-style headshot needs, and forms are sized around the field, not around your camera.
A photo upload field on a form is almost always destined for a small box: a corner of a printed admit card, a row in an administrative list, a thumbnail beside a name. At the size it will actually be displayed, 20 KB is genuinely enough, and the cap exists because the system holds millions of them.
That is worth knowing because it changes what you should optimize for. You are not preserving a photograph, you are preserving a recognizable face at thumbnail size. Sharp eyes and clear edges matter. The texture of the wall behind you does not.
It also explains why your phone photo is 4 MB and the form wants 20 KB. Your camera captured 200 times more information than the form will ever show. Nearly all of what compression removes here is detail nobody was going to see.
Getting it right
Getting a face to survive 20KB
At 20 KB the encoder has to throw away most of the file, so what you give it matters more than usual.
Crop to the frame the form wants before compressing. If the form shows a head-and-shoulders box and you upload a full-body shot, the compressor spends its whole budget on your shoes and the room. Cropping first is the single largest quality gain available at this size, and it costs nothing.
Plain backgrounds compress dramatically better than busy ones. A face against a flat wall gives the encoder a huge region it can describe cheaply, leaving more of the 20 KB for the face itself. A bookshelf behind you competes with your face for the same budget and usually wins, because it has more edges.
If the result looks blocky in the cheeks and forehead, that is the encoder running out of room in the smooth areas. A tighter crop is the reliable fix. Sharpening beforehand is not: it adds edges, and edges are exactly what costs bytes.
Formats
JPG vs PNG vs WebP at 20 KB
The same 20 KB target produces three different outcomes depending on what you upload, because the three formats get there by different means.
| Format | How it reaches 20 KB | How it holds up |
|---|---|---|
| JPG | Encoder quality is lowered until the file fits | Tight. A cropped face survives, a busy scene does not. |
| PNG | Colour count is reduced and the file rewritten | Only for flat art and screenshots. A PNG photo will struggle. |
| WebP | Encoder quality is lowered, more efficiently than JPG | Usually the best looking of the three at 20 KB. |
If your image is a photograph and it is already a JPG or WebP, 20 KB is a straightforward ask. If it is a PNG photograph, converting it to JPG first will get you a better looking result at 20 KB than compressing it as a PNG will.
Pick a size
20 KB vs 15 KB vs 25 KB
If the number you were given is not 20 KB, one of these is. Each opens the same tool with its own target already set.
The quality difference between neighbouring sizes is much larger at the small end than at the large end. Going from 15 KB to 30 KB transforms a photograph. Going from 200 KB to 500 KB is barely visible on most images. That is worth knowing if you have any choice about which limit to work to.
What the 20 KB compressor does for you
Everything below happens on your own device, in the time it takes to read this line.
Lands under 20 KB
The tool searches for the highest quality whose output still fits under 20 KB, then tells you the size it reached.
Your format, kept
A PNG comes back a PNG, a JPG comes back a JPG. We never convert your file to get a better number.
Nothing leaves your device
The work runs in your browser. No upload, no queue, no copy of your image on anyone's server.
See the saving before you keep it
Original and result side by side, with both exact sizes and the percentage saved, before you download anything.
Works on a phone
The whole tool runs in a mobile browser, which matters when the photo you need to shrink is already on your phone.
Free, with no account
No signup, no watermark and no daily cap. Compress as many files as you need.
Compressing to 20 KB: common questions
What people ask before and after they hit the 20 KB button.
Yes, and the ratio sounds worse than it looks. A modern phone photo is roughly 4000 pixels wide and carries far more detail than any form will display, so most of what gets discarded was never going to be visible in the box the photo ends up in.
The result will not survive being printed at poster size, but it will look correct at the size it is used. That is the trade 20 KB is asking you to make.
For an on-screen or small-print passport-size photo, yes. That is the size range these caps were designed around, and a well-cropped headshot at 20 KB reads clearly at the dimensions it is displayed.
If the photo is going to be printed large, 20 KB is not enough and no tool can change that. Check whether the form has a higher ceiling you can use instead.
Almost always a second requirement you have not hit yet. Photo fields usually also specify pixel dimensions, an aspect ratio, or an accepted format, and they tend to report only the first failure they find.
Check the form for a required width and height in pixels. If it has one, resize to those dimensions first, then come back and compress to 20 KB. Compressing does not change dimensions, so the two steps are independent.
No. The compression runs inside your browser, using the canvas your browser already ships with. Your file is read from your own device, processed in memory, and handed straight back to you.
Nothing is transmitted, which means nothing can be stored, logged or leaked. It also means the tool keeps working if your connection drops halfway through.
Free, with no watermark, no account and no daily limit. Compressing to 20 KB costs you nothing and produces a clean file.
There is nothing to sign up for because there is no server doing the work. The tool is the page you are already on.
JPG (and JPEG, which is the same format), PNG and WebP, at up to 25 MB per file. Your file comes back in the format you gave it.
HEIC from an iPhone, AVIF and GIF are not supported yet. If your photo is a HEIC, exporting it as a JPG first will let you compress it here.
Your 20 KB file is one drop away
The target is already set. Add your image, press compress, download.