Hit a hard 20 KB upload limit without guessing at a quality slider. Drop one photo below and the tool searches for the best quality that still fits under 20 KB. Free, no signup, no watermark.
Drop a photo here, or click to choose
JPG, PNG, WEBP, or iPhone HEIC · max 50 MB · output is JPG at 20 KB
A modern phone photo is 3–6 MB. Getting that to 20 KB is a reduction of more than 99%, and you cannot reach it by nudging a quality slider — past a certain point the encoder has nothing left to remove and you just get a blurry file that is still too big. The two levers that actually work are pixel dimensions and encoder quality, and they have to be balanced together.
This tool scales the photo down to a web-sensible width first, then re-encodes it repeatedly, narrowing in on the highest quality that still lands under 20 KB. That is why it can reach sizes a manual slider usually cannot.
If the form also dictates an exact pixel box (200 x 230, for example), use the main compressor with custom width and height, then apply the 20 KB target there. Dimensions and file size are separate requirements, and some portals reject you on one or the other.
Very detailed or very large images sometimes cannot reach 20 KB without becoming unusable. When that happens the tool returns the smallest file it can make and warns you, rather than silently shipping something that fails the upload or looks nothing like the original. The usual fix is to crop tighter around the face or subject, which removes the detail the encoder was spending its budget on.
Choose a JPG, PNG, WEBP, or HEIC photo above and press Compress to 20 KB. The image is resized to a sensible web width and re-encoded repeatedly until the file is at or under 20 KB, then you download it. No signup and no email required.
Government, exam, and job portals store millions of applicant photos and enforce small caps so their servers and reviewers can handle the volume. 20 KB is one of the tightest limits in common use — usually paired with an exact pixel size such as 200 x 230.
At 20 KB, a large or very detailed photo may not fit without visible damage. The tool always returns the smallest file it can produce and tells you when the target was missed. In that case, crop tighter around the subject first, or reduce the pixel dimensions, and try again.
Always use the largest size the form allows. If the instructions say 100 KB, use 100 KB — the photo will look noticeably better for the same acceptance. Only compress to 20 KB when the portal actually caps you there.
It scales the image down to a maximum width of 1280 pixels before compressing, because shrinking the pixel count is the most effective way to reach a very small file size without destroying detail. If the form specifies exact dimensions, set them on the homepage compressor instead, which accepts custom width and height.
Yes, this tool compresses on our server so that HEIC files and aggressive target-size search work everywhere. Files are written to a temporary folder, processed, and that folder is deleted immediately afterwards. For fully on-device compression of JPG, PNG, or WEBP, use Browser mode on the homepage.