Shredders range in size and price from small and inexpensive units meant for a few pages, to large units used by commercial shredding services that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and can shred millions of documents an hour. Some shredders used by a commercial shredding service are built into a shredding truck.

These machines are classified according to the size and shape of the shreds they produce.

• Strip-cut shredders use rotating knives to cut narrow strips as long as the original sheet of paper. These strips can be reassembled by a determined investigator, so this type of shredder is the least secure. It also creates the highest volume of waste.
• Cross-cut or confetti-cut shredders use two contra-rotating drums to cut rectangular, parallelogram, or diamond-shaped shreds.
• Particle-cut shredders create tiny square or circular pieces.
• Disintegrators and granulators repeatedly cut the paper at random until the particles are small enough to pass through a mesh.
• Hammermills pound the paper through a screen.
• Pierce and Tear Rotating blades pierce the paper and then tear it apart.
• Grinders A rotating shaft with cutting blades grinds the paper until it is small enough to fall through a screen.

There are numerous standards for the security levels of paper shredders, including:

• DIN 32757
  • Level 1 = 12 mm strips
  • Level 2 = 6 mm strips
  • Level 3 = 2 mm strips (Confidential)
  • Level 4 = 2 x 15 mm particles (Commercially Sensitive)
  • Level 5 = 0.8 x 12 mm particles (Top Secret or Classified)
  • Level 6 = 0.8 x 4 mm particles (Top Secret or Classified)
• United States Department of Defense (DoD)
  • Top Secret = 0.8 x 11.1 mm (1/32" - 7/16")
• United States NSA/CSS 02-01 = 1 - 4 mm

Historically, the US General Services Administration (GSA) set paper shredder guidance in the Interim Federal Specification FF-S-001169 dated 7/1971 which was superseded by standard A-A-2599 for classified material which was canceled in 2/2000. GSA has not published a new standard since.

There are also alternative shredders that use burning, chemical decomposition, or composting for disposing of the shreds.

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