What the 50 MB limit covers
The ceiling is per PDF document as uploaded. Each component of a multi-part filing is measured on its own.
The 2020 increase matters when reading anything written before it. Checklists, firm templates and third-party help pages still circulate quoting the old 10 MB figure, which would have you splitting a document that the system now accepts whole.
Why a filing gets this large
A 50 MB ceiling accommodates almost any text document. What passes it is imagery: scanned exhibits, medical records, photographs of a scene or a vehicle, and screenshots pasted at full resolution into a word processor before export.
Screenshots deserve particular mention because they are so often the surprise. A modern phone or laptop screenshot is several megapixels; a dozen of them embedded in a declaration can outweigh the entire text of the document by two orders of magnitude.
Resampling those images to the resolution a page actually renders at — around 150 to 200 DPI for ordinary reading — typically removes most of the file while leaving the exhibit perfectly legible.
Checking the limit yourself
CM/ECF reports its own current ceiling. From the CM/ECF startup page, the Court Information link shows the Maximum PDF File Size the system will accept at that moment. That figure is authoritative for the system you are actually filing into, and it is worth a look whenever a filing is refused for size — districts raise these limits without much announcement, and a number you remember from last year may simply be out of date.
If the file is an exhibit
Lossy compression alters a file. Every byte of the output differs from the input, even where the page looks identical on screen, and that can matter if the document's authenticity is ever contested. ShrinkWrit shows the SHA-256 hash of the file you started with and the file it produced, so the change is documented rather than invisible.
The lossless mode strips metadata and repacks the file without touching a single pixel or sample. It saves less, and on a heavily scanned document it may not reach the limit at all — but when it does, the image data is bit-for-bit what it was. Your original is never modified either way; the output is always a new file.
Common questions
- Is the M.D. Florida limit 10 MB or 50 MB?
- 50 MB per document, since 22 September 2020. The 10 MB figure was correct before that date and still appears in a lot of older material.
- Does the limit apply per document or per filing?
- Per document as uploaded. A filing made up of several PDFs is measured piece by piece.
- My declaration is huge because of embedded screenshots. What helps?
- Screenshots are stored inside the PDF as full-resolution images regardless of how small they appear on the page. Downsampling them to roughly the resolution the page is read at is usually enough on its own, and leaves the surrounding text untouched.
- Can compression reduce a PDF without making the text blurry?
- Yes, when the text is genuine text rather than a picture of text. ShrinkWrit resamples embedded images and leaves text objects alone, so the type stays sharp at any zoom. In a scanned document there is no text layer to protect — everything on the page is an image — and softening is unavoidable.
The 50 MB figure on this page was last checked against the court’s own notice on Jul 2026. Limits change without much announcement — confirm it at the source before you file.