Abstract: We show that a polyregular word-to-word function is regular if and only its output size is at most linear in its input size. Moreover a polyregular function can be realized by: a transducer with two pebbles if and only if its output has quadratic size in its input, a transducer with three pebbles if and only if its output has cubic size in its input, etc. Moreover the characterization is decidable and, given a polyregular function, one can compute a transducer realizing it with the minimal number of pebbles. We apply the result to mso interpretations from words to words. We show that mso interpretations of dimension k exactly coincide with k-pebble transductions.