Filestay
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Compress image to 10 KB

Set the budget, and the encoder is searched for the best quality that fits under 10 KB. On your device — the image is never uploaded.

  • 0 uploads
  • No limits
  • No signup
  • Works offline

Where a 10 KB limit comes from

Nobody chooses 10 KB for fun. If you are here, a form told you to, and the form probably did not explain how. These are the places this particular number turns up:

  • Signature and thumbnail fields on older government portals
  • Avatar uploads on legacy forums and intranets
  • Inline images in strict email newsletter templates

Ten kilobytes is genuinely tiny — about one 60×60 pixel icon at reasonable quality. A full portrait squeezed to 10 KB will be soft and blocky no matter which tool does it.

What to expect at this size

Image compression is a trade between three things: pixel dimensions, visual quality and file size. Fix any two and the third follows. Because you have been handed a fixed file size, the question becomes how to split the remaining budget between dimensions and quality.

This tool spends it on dimensions first. A 1000-pixel image at quality 55 almost always looks better than a 500-pixel image at quality 95, because the eye is far more forgiving of compression artefacts than of missing resolution. Only when quality has nothing left to give does the resolution come down.

Expect a small image, not a small version of a big image.

Getting a better result

Three things reliably help when the budget is tight:

  • Crop before compressing. Every pixel you keep costs bytes. A tightly framed portrait at 10 KB looks far better than a full-body shot squeezed into the same space. The cropper hands its result straight to this tool.
  • Start from the highest-quality original you have. Compressing an image that has already been through WhatsApp compounds the damage. Go back to the file straight off the camera.
  • Prefer WebP if the form allows it. At the same file size WebP holds noticeably more detail than JPEG. Most official forms still want JPG, but it costs nothing to check.

Other common targets

20 KB · 30 KB · 50 KB · 100 KB · 150 KB · 200 KB · 300 KB · 500 KB

How it works

  1. 01Add your imageDrop it on the page, click to browse, or paste from the clipboard.
  2. 02The 10 KB target is already setYou landed on this page, so the budget is filled in. Change it if you need something different.
  3. 03The search runsThe encoder is run repeatedly, binary-searching quality for the best result that still fits under 10 KB.
  4. 04Compare, then downloadDrag the before/after slider to see what the compression cost before you commit.

Questions people actually ask

Will my photo still look acceptable at 10 KB?
Ten kilobytes is genuinely tiny — about one 60×60 pixel icon at reasonable quality. A full portrait squeezed to 10 KB will be soft and blocky no matter which tool does it. Expect a small image, not a small version of a big image.
Is the result exactly 10 KB?
It lands within about 5% below 10 KB, and never above it. Going over would defeat the point — a form that says "maximum 10 KB" rejects a file of 11 KB without explanation.
What if the target is impossible at full resolution?
Quality is reduced first, because keeping pixels usually looks better than keeping precision. Only when the lowest acceptable quality still overshoots does the image get scaled down a step, and then the quality search starts again at the smaller size.
Does it work on PNG?
PNG is lossless, so it has no quality dial to search — hitting an exact byte target with PNG means resizing. For a specific KB budget, JPG (for photographs) or WebP (for anything modern) will give you a much better-looking result. The tool defaults to keeping your original format, so switch it if you need to.
Is my image uploaded?
No. Every encode in the search runs on your own device, in a background thread, using WebAssembly builds of MozJPEG and libwebp. Nothing is transmitted, which is also why there is no limit on how many images you can do.
The form also wants specific pixel dimensions. What order should I do things in?
Resize first, compress second. Resizing after compressing throws away the work the compressor just did. Use the resizer, then chain straight into this tool from the result screen.

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