Phones record beautiful, enormous video. A minute of 4K footage from a recent iPhone is a few hundred megabytes, far beyond what email, Discord or a website form will accept. Compression re-encodes the video so it uses fewer bits per second, which can shrink a file to a fraction of its size while still looking good on a phone or laptop screen.
This compressor works on MP4, MOV, M4V, WEBM, MKV, AVI, WMV, FLV and 3GP files. You pick one of three presets, the video is compressed on our server, and the result panel tells you exactly how much you saved and where the new file fits.
How to compress a video
- Drag the video onto the box above, or click to choose it. On a phone, pick it from your photo library. The box shows today's size limit.
- Choose a preset. Smallest file for email, Discord and chat apps, Balanced for most uses, High quality when detail matters more than size. When your browser can read the video, the line below shows its length, resolution and current bitrate.
- Click Compress video. The progress bar shows the upload in megabytes, then In line if other videos are ahead, then the compression progress.
- When Your file is ready appears, the compressed MP4 downloads automatically. If not, click Download MP4.
- Read the result panel: size before, size after, the percentage saved, and a list of destinations with Fits, Close to the limit or Too big.
- Watch the compressed video on the kind of screen it is meant for. If it is too soft, compress the original again with a higher preset.
Always compress the original file, not a copy you already compressed. Each round of compression loses a little more detail.
Where your video goes
Compressing video takes real processing power, more than a phone browser can offer for long files, so the work happens on our conversion server. Your video is uploaded over HTTPS together with the preset name and nothing else: no account, no email, no data from your device. The upload is deleted as soon as the job ends. The compressed MP4 is kept for 30 minutes so you can download it, and the page shows when that window closes. After the first download, the Download button keeps a copy in your open tab for files of a normal size, so you can save it again until you leave the page.
Uploading is usually the slowest step for big videos. A 500 MB file on a connection that uploads at 20 Mbps takes a little over three minutes to send. The progress bar shows the megabytes sent, so you always know how long is left.
Which preset to choose
| Preset | Use it for | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Smallest file | Email attachments, Discord on a free account, quick previews, chat apps | The biggest size cut. Fine detail and small text get softer, and fast motion can look blocky. |
| Balanced | Phone videos for sharing, website and product videos, social uploads | A large saving with quality that looks right on phones and laptops. The best default. |
| High quality | Screen recordings with text, videos you will edit further, footage for clients | Keeps the most detail. Savings depend on how efficiently the video was recorded. |
How much a preset saves depends on the source. A 4K phone video at a high bitrate can shrink by 80 percent or more. A video that was already compressed for the web, for example a file downloaded from a social platform, may hardly shrink at all, and occasionally the result is even larger. The result panel tells you when that happens, and in that case you should keep the original.
Size limits where you will send it (October 2026)
These are the limits the result panel checks, as published by each service and checked in October 2026. Services change them from time to time, so if a file near a limit is refused, check the service's help page.
| Destination | Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Discord, free account | 20 MB per file | Raised from 10 MB in August 2026 |
| Discord Nitro Basic | 50 MB per file | Full Nitro allows 500 MB |
| Gmail | 25 MB of attachments | Larger files are sent as a Google Drive link instead |
| Outlook.com | 25 MB per message | Text and all attachments count together; OneDrive links do not |
| Yahoo Mail | 25 MB per message | All attachments together |
| iCloud Mail | 20 MB per message | Mail Drop sends larger files as a link, up to 5 GB |
| WhatsApp, sent as a document | 2 GB | Sent as a normal video, WhatsApp recompresses it to a lower quality |
| Etsy listing video | 100 MB | 3 to 15 seconds long; it plays without sound |
Why email needs extra room
Email does not send attachments as raw files. It encodes them as text, which makes them roughly a third larger in transit, and the receiving server may count that larger size against its own limit. A 24 MB video that Gmail lets you attach can bounce at a company mail server. That is why the result panel marks email destinations as Close to the limit above about 18 MB. For email, aim for 18 MB or less, or share a cloud link instead.
How video compression works
A video's file size is almost entirely its bitrate multiplied by its length. A video at 2 megabits per second (Mbps) uses 2 x 60 = 120 megabits per minute, which is 15 MB. Halve the bitrate and you halve the size. The audio track is small by comparison, usually around 1 MB per minute.
The compressor re-encodes the video at a lower bitrate while keeping the picture as clean as possible, and saves it as MP4, the format that plays on every phone, browser and platform. Three things decide how well that works:
- Resolution. More pixels need more bits. A 4K video holds four times the pixels of 1080p, which few people see on a phone screen.
- Motion and detail. A talking head on a plain wall compresses very well. Confetti, water, grass and fast camera pans need many more bits to look clean.
- Length. No preset can squeeze a 20 minute video into 20 MB at a watchable quality. Trimming is the most effective compression there is.
Worked examples
A 4K phone video for Discord
A 45 second clip from an iPhone, recorded in 4K at 30 fps, is around 140 MB. Compress it with Smallest file and look at the Discord rows in the result panel. If the free account row shows Fits, you are done. If it shows Too big, trim the clip to the part people need to see with the video trimmer and compress the trimmed original. Cutting 45 seconds to 15 roughly divides the size by three.
A product demo for a client email
A 2 minute screen recording with narration is 180 MB. Balanced keeps the on-screen text readable and brings it down substantially. If the result is still above 18 MB, the honest answer is a link: upload it to Google Drive, Dropbox or YouTube (unlisted) and email the link. Email is the wrong channel for long videos.
A product video for an online store
Store themes load faster with smaller videos, and product pages are often viewed on mobile data. Balanced is a good fit. Short looping clips usually do not need sound; remove it with Mute Video if the platform plays videos silently anyway, as Etsy does. If you post the same products to social channels on a schedule, AM Jarvis Social Autopilot turns store products into Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook posts sized for each platform and posts them on a schedule.
Reading the result panel
When the job is done, three numbers appear: the size of your original, the size of the compressed file, and the percentage saved. Underneath, each destination gets a label:
- Fits: the file is under that service's limit with room to spare.
- Close to the limit: shown for email services when the file is between about 18 MB and the 20 or 25 MB limit. It may go through, or it may bounce at the recipient's server.
- Too big: trim the video, try a smaller preset on the original, or send a link.
If the saving is under 5 percent, or the file got larger, a note explains why and what to try. The original file on your device is never changed.
Compressing for social platforms
Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook re-encode every video you upload, whatever you send them. Uploading a heavily compressed file means it is compressed twice, which shows. If your connection can handle it, upload the original or a High quality version and let the platform do its own processing. Compress first when the platform refuses the file size, when you are uploading over slow mobile data, or when you share the same clip through chat apps and email as well.
Tips for the smallest file with the best look
- Trim first. Every second you cut is a second less to store.
- Record at the resolution you need. If the video is only for chat apps, 1080p at 30 fps is plenty and gives much smaller originals.
- Keep the camera steady. Shaky footage changes every pixel in every frame, which costs bits.
- Use light, clean backgrounds for talking videos. Busy patterns and dim, grainy rooms are hard to compress.
- Do not compress twice. Go back to the original for a second attempt with another preset.
Troubleshooting
The compressed file is larger than the original
The original was already compressed efficiently, often because it came from a social platform or a screen recorder. Keep the original, try Smallest file, or trim the video.
The result looks blocky or blurry
The preset was too aggressive for this footage. Compress the original again with Balanced or High quality. For text on screen, High quality usually keeps it crisp.
The video info line does not appear
Your browser cannot preview that format (common with MKV, AVI and some MOV files). Compression still works on the server.
You only need the sound
For a recorded call, lecture or podcast, the picture is most of the file. Extract the audio with MP4 to MP3 instead: an hour of speech at 128 kbps is about 55 MB, a fraction of the video.
The file is refused as too large
The limit is shown in the drop box. Split the video into shorter parts with the trimmer and compress each part.
The upload failed or the converter is unavailable
Check your connection and click Try again. If the converter is paused, click Check again after a minute. The free daily count resets tomorrow if you see the daily limit message.
Limits and privacy
- One video per job, up to the size shown in the drop box. The result is an MP4 file.
- Three presets; there is no exact target size setting.
- The video is uploaded over HTTPS to our server. The upload is deleted as soon as the job ends and the compressed file 30 minutes after it is ready. Nothing else is sent.