Compress JPEG Images Online for Free

Quality settings for JPEG compression:

• ·85–90% — Near-lossless. Portfolio photos, client deliverables, print-ready files. Roughly 45% smaller than uncompressed.
• ·75–85% — Balanced. Most website images, blog photos, product shots. Imperceptible quality loss. Roughly 60% smaller.
• ·60–75% — Aggressive. Thumbnails, low-priority previews, images viewed on small screens. Visible only on close inspection at full size. Roughly 75% smaller.
• ·Below 60% — Heavy artifacts appear in smooth gradients and around edges. Placeholder images only.

Platform targets: Instagram 80–85%, website hero images 75–80%, client delivery 90%+, professional print 92%+.

One rule to remember: Always compress from the original file, not from a previously compressed JPEG. Re-compressing a JPEG stacks quality loss — two rounds at 80% is visibly worse than one round at 70%.

JPEG vs PNG: JPEG produces 3–10× smaller files for photographs. PNG is lossless, making it larger but pixel-perfect. Use PNG when you need transparency or plan to edit the image multiple times without quality loss.

JPEG vs WebP: WebP achieves 25–35% smaller files at equivalent quality settings. For new web projects where browser support is not a concern, WebP is the better choice. JPEG remains necessary for broad compatibility — email, older software, print workflows.

JPEG vs AVIF: AVIF is 40–50% smaller than JPEG at equivalent quality, but has lower tooling support as of 2025. Worth adopting for web-only use cases where you control the output pipeline.

JPEG uses DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) compression — a lossy algorithm that achieves large size reductions by permanently discarding colour data your eyes are least likely to notice. The quality setting (1–100) directly controls how aggressively it discards. Higher quality means larger files; lower quality means smaller files with increasingly visible artifacts.

This compressor targets JPEG specifically: where the quality threshold matters, what artifacts look like and why they appear, and which settings match which use cases. A 75% quality JPEG and an 85% quality JPEG look nearly identical on a phone screen but differ by roughly 30% in file size — understanding this distinction lets you make intentional choices rather than guessing.

Upload your JPEG, set quality, and preview the result side-by-side against the original before downloading. Everything runs in your browser. Your file never leaves your device.