Compress image to 20 KB

Twenty kilobytes is the harshest limit most people ever meet — it shows up on signature uploads, older government portals and strict exam forms. The compressor above is already set to 20 KB: add your image and it will find the smallest, cleanest version that fits.

Drop images here, or browse your files

JPG, PNG or WebP · add as many as you like · everything runs locally in your browser, nothing is uploaded

Target size

20 KB 50 KB 100 KB 200 KB 500 KB 1 MB

Custom KB

Output format Keep original format JPG — best for photos WebP — smallest for the web PNG — lossless, shrinks by resizing

Compress

Add an image to begin.

What actually needs 20 KB?

• Scanned signatures. Many application portals cap signature images at 10–20 KB, well below what a phone photo produces.
• Strict exam and recruitment forms. Some boards still run limits set when bandwidth was scarce; the photo window can be as tight as 20 KB.
• Forum and community avatars. Older forum software often refuses anything above 20 KB.
• Email signature images. A logo that rides along with every message you send should cost almost nothing.

How to keep a 20 KB image readable

At 20 KB, dimensions are your budget. A signature scanned at 4000 pixels wide wastes nearly all of its bytes on empty white space. Crop tightly around the signature first — most portals display it at a few hundred pixels wide anyway. For photographs, a head-and-shoulders crop at roughly 600–800 pixels wide compresses far better than a full-body shot, because the encoder can spend its small budget on the face instead of the background. If the result still looks soft, choose JPG output: at very small sizes JPG holds faces together better than WebP on some browsers, and far better than a heavily downscaled PNG.

If 20 KB is impossible at a usable size

Sometimes a detailed image simply cannot reach 20 KB without becoming a postage stamp. When that happens here, the tool says so and hands you the smallest file it could produce rather than pretending. Before giving up, try cropping, then converting to JPG, then — only if the portal allows it — check whether the limit is really 20 KB for the photo as well, or just for the signature. Our exam & form guide lists the typical limits side by side.