Wide white borders are a quiet waste of space. A scan with a two-centimetre frame around every page, a report exported with generous margins, a document that never fills the screen on your phone — all of them read better trimmed. Cropping a PDF pulls the edges in so the content takes centre stage, and done right it’s completely lossless. This guide shows how, and how cropping differs from actually resizing a page.
How to crop a PDF
Ream’s Crop PDF trims the margins for you, evenly on all four sides:
- Add your PDF to Crop PDF — it loads in your browser, no upload.
- Choose how much to trim — 5%, 10%, 15% or 20% off each side.
- Download the tighter version. The same amount comes off every side, so your content stays centred.
How much should you trim?
The right amount depends on how big your margins are — and because it’s non-destructive, there’s no harm in trying one and re-running if you overshoot.
| Setting | Good for |
|---|---|
| 5% | A gentle tidy-up of a normal document |
| 10% | Noticeably tighter — most reports and exports |
| 15–20% | Scans and pages with very wide white borders |
Crop, or resize?
If your goal is to cut away empty border so the content is bigger on screen or on paper, crop. If instead you need the page to be a specific size — converting an odd format to A4, or making mixed pages uniform — that’s Resize Pages, which scales the whole page and fits the content to it. They pair well: crop away the waste, then resize to a standard if a printer or portal needs one.
Cropping a scan? Trimming the border makes the text bigger and the file a touch smaller, but the page is still an image — run OCR if you need it searchable, and Compress if it’s heavy. To straighten a crooked scan at the same time, see rotating and rearranging pages.
Is it private, and is it free?
Crop PDF runs entirely in your browser — your file is never uploaded — and it’s free with no account or watermark. Because it only adjusts the crop box rather than redrawing the page, the underlying content and its quality are untouched; you’re just changing what shows.
Frequently asked questions
How do I crop a PDF? Add it to Crop PDF, choose how much to trim (5–20%), and download the copy with the margins removed.
Does cropping delete the content it hides? No — it sets the page’s crop box, so the margins are hidden rather than erased. The crop is non-destructive.
Can I crop just one side? Not currently — Ream trims the same percentage evenly from all four sides to keep the page centred.
Will cropping lower the quality? No. The page isn’t re-rendered, so quality is unchanged — you’re only changing the visible area.
Is the same amount cropped from every page? Yes — the percentage you choose applies to every page in the file.
What’s the difference between crop and resize? Crop hides the outer margins at the current size; Resize scales the whole page to a new standard size.
Is my file uploaded? No — cropping runs entirely in your browser, so the PDF stays on your device.
Cropping is the fastest way to make a document feel intentional: pull in the margins, let the content breathe, and lose nothing in the process. Start at Crop PDF, reach for Resize Pages when you need a specific format, and finish with Compress or OCR if it’s a scan.
