Free tools › Images
Compress JPEG to 20 KB
The size exam portals ask for, and the one that needs fewer pixels.
More free conversions, where you upload. The Fylane extension does the same work inside any upload form, on its own free share every day.Add to Chrome
How to convert Compress JPEG to 20 KB
- Drop the photo, or choose it from your device.
- Press Compress — the target is already 20 KB.
- Download the file, now under the limit.
What happens to your file
Twenty kilobytes is a severe budget, and it is almost always an examination portal asking: staff selection, banking and railway recruitment forms in India converge on 20 KB for the photograph and something smaller still for the signature. This page is that number, already chosen.
A JPG, PNG or WebP never leaves your device. The browser decodes it and a bounded search lowers the encoder quality — at most six probes — until the file fits.
At 20 KB, quality alone will not get a modern phone photograph there, so the dimensions are stepped down as well, and the result tells you what it did. This is not the page being clever; it is arithmetic. A 4,000-pixel-wide photo cannot hold 4,000 pixels inside 20 KB.
That is usually the right answer anyway. Portals that ask for 20 KB also ask for a small picture — often around 200 × 230 pixels — so a file that fits the size limit and a file that fits the pixel rule tend to be the same file.
Questions
Will a photo still be usable at 20 KB?
For the passport-style headshot these forms want, yes. The picture is small on purpose, and at that size 20 KB is enough to keep a face recognisable. A full-width landscape photograph at 20 KB will not survive, and no tool can change that.
Why does my exam form want 20 KB?
Because it was specified when storage and bandwidth were expensive, and the rule was never revisited. Indian recruitment and examination portals are the most common source of the number, and they tend to pair it with a fixed pixel size.
How do I get a signature down to 20 KB?
Scan or photograph it, crop away everything but the ink, and run it through this page. A signature is flat ink on white paper, which compresses far better than a face — it usually lands well under 20 KB with the dimensions untouched.
Is it really not uploaded?
For JPG, PNG and WebP, correct — the page works with your network unplugged. The privacy sweep in our test suite asserts that no host is contacted.
What if 20 KB is not possible?
The page tells you, and hands you the smallest honest version rather than mush. Crop first if you can: fewer pixels is the one change that always helps.
Do it once, not on every form
A form that wants a square JPEG under 240 KB says so on the page. The Fylane extension reads that, fits your photo to it, and puts it in the field — without you working out what 240 KB looks like.
And it keeps the result. The next application that asks for a résumé, a cover letter and a photo fills all three from one tap, each one refitted to what that site accepts.
Your files stay in the browser, encrypted, on your machine. Nothing is uploaded to keep them and nothing is sent anywhere to fill a form.
Related tools
Do this in code
curl -X POST https://api.fylane.dev/v1/jobs \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $FYLANE_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"file_id": "<file id>",
"operation": "image.convert",
"options": {
"target_bytes": 20480
}
}'The same operation, image.convert — Re-encode to WebP, JPEG, PNG or AVIF at your quality. Upload first with the quickstart; every option is on the operations page. 500 free credits a month, then $5 per thousand.