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Compress Video for Discord's 20 MB Limit

Drop in a clip and it is re-encoded to land just under the 20 MB a free Discord account has allowed since 13 August 2026 — not the 8 MB or 25 MB most guides still print.

The encode runs on your own device — the recording is never sent to us or anyone else.

Upload or Select File

MP4, MOV, WebM, MKV and AVI, up to 2 GB. The file stays on your device.

Discord's free cap has been four different numbers in three years

Accounts without Nitro sat at 8 MB for years. On 11 April 2023 Discord lifted that to 25 MB for everybody, then reversed course in September 2024 and cut free accounts back to 10 MB, naming storage costs as the reason. On 13 August 2026 it settled on 20 MB. That churn is why the top results for this search still contradict one another: a guide written in good faith two years ago now sends you to the wrong figure.

Guessing wrong hurts in both directions. Aim at 8 MB and you throw away half the picture for nothing. Aim at 25 MB and the upload is refused after the entire file has already gone up the wire. The preset here is 20 MB, and it is deliberately undershot, because a few kilobytes of container overhead are enough to have an upload bounced at the very last step.

How the number is actually hit

Target size is not a quality slider wearing a different label. The running time is read out of the container, the planned audio bitrate is subtracted from the budget, and the bits that remain are spread across that running time to give the video bitrate which lands on 20 MB. The estimate printed above the button is the same equation read backwards, so the figure on screen is the figure the encoder is handed.

Encoders are not perfectly obedient — they spend bits where the motion is — so the finished file usually comes in within about ten per cent of the estimate, more often under than over. Three per cent of the budget goes to MP4 overhead before any of this happens, which means 20 MB here really means roughly 19.4 MB of picture and sound.

Past about forty seconds of 1080p, something has to give

There is a clip length beyond which no bitrate rescues you, and the second table below is an honest account of where it sits. Those numbers are not typed into a file: they come from the same bitrate curve the Balanced preset uses, solved for duration instead of for bitrate, so they move if the tool's arithmetic ever moves.

Resolution is the lever with the best exchange rate. Going from 1080p to 720p sheds 56 per cent of the pixels and roughly doubles what fits, and on the phone screen where most Discord video gets watched the loss is hard to spot. Frame rate is the second lever: 60 fps gameplay halved to 30 fps buys back close to a third. Longer than three or four minutes, cut the clip down to the part worth watching, or post a link and let the host keep the quality.

The other two caps, and what comes out the other end

Nitro Basic raises the ceiling to 50 MB and full Nitro to 500 MB. Both are measured per file rather than per message, so splitting a long recording across two uploads is a real, if clumsy, workaround on a free account. If you are compressing something for someone else to post, aim at their tier and not yours.

Whatever you started from, the download is an MP4 carrying H.264 video and AAC audio, the pair with the widest playback support anywhere. HEVC, VP9 and AV1 sources are all accepted: your browser decodes them and re-encodes on the way out. The file keeps its original base name with "-compressed" appended, so you can still tell your takes apart.

Discord's free upload limit, dated

Every one of these numbers was correct at the time, which is exactly why so many pages are wrong today.

WhenFree upload limitWhat happened
Before April 20238 MBThe long-standing ceiling for anyone without a Nitro subscription.
11 April 202325 MBRaised for every account, subscriber or not.
September 202410 MBCut back for free accounts, with storage costs given as the reason.
13 August 202620 MBDoubled again. This is the cap in force today, and the preset on this page.
Last checked: September 2026Discord raises its free upload limit (Yahoo Tech, Aug 2026)Discord: File Attachments FAQ

How much video fits in 20 MB

At the bitrate the Balanced preset would choose for each frame size, with a 128 kbps audio track kept. Worked out from the compressor's own maths rather than estimated by hand.

Frame sizeFits in 20 MB30 fps
1080p42 s3.7 Mbps
720p1:241.8 Mbps
480p2:43868 kbps

Go longer and the encoder would have to drop below what H.264 can hold together. The panel says so out loud instead of quietly shipping mush — step down a row, or trim first.

How to get a video under Discord's limit

Three steps, and the clip never leaves your computer

  1. Drop in the clip

    Pick the MP4, MOV, WebM, MKV or AVI that Discord refused. The browser opens it straight from disk, so no server ever sees the recording.

  2. 20 MB is already chosen

    The panel opens on target size with the free-account cap selected. Switch to 50 MB for Nitro Basic, 500 MB for Nitro, or type any figure you need.

  3. Encode, then post it

    Your own device re-encodes the video to MP4 and reports the before and after size. Save it and drag it into the channel — no watermark, no account.

FAQ

Discord video size, answered

Twenty megabytes per file on a free account, in force since 13 August 2026. Nitro Basic takes it to 50 MB and full Nitro to 500 MB. Plenty of pages still quote 8 MB, 10 MB or 25 MB, because all three were true at some point between 2023 and 2026.
Because an MP4 is more than its picture and sound: the index that lets a player seek, plus per-sample tables, take up room too. Three per cent of the budget is reserved for that before the bitrate is worked out, so a cap-busting overshoot cannot happen on a rounding error.
Yes. Tap 50 MB for Nitro Basic or type 500 for full Nitro and the maths re-runs against that figure. Everything else on the panel behaves the same way, and the 20 MB default is only a starting point, never a ceiling.
Step the resolution down before you touch anything else — 1080p to 720p sheds more than half the pixels and roughly doubles the length that fits. Sixty-frame gameplay cut to 30 fps buys back another third. Beyond three or four minutes, trim the clip to the part worth watching.
It is re-encoded to AAC and kept by default, aiming at 128 kbps but never spending more than the source already did. If the sound does not matter, setting audio to 96 kbps or removing it entirely hands those bits back to the picture, which is worth doing on a silent screen recording.
No. Decoding and encoding both happen on your machine through the browser's WebCodecs API, and you can prove it: open DevTools, watch the Network tab while a clip compresses, and you will not see your file in the list. Nothing is stored and nothing needs an account.

Next stops

Other ways to get a file down to size, and one thing compression cannot do.

Compression only ever removes detail. To put some back — a blurry screen capture rebuilt at a higher resolution — try the AI video upscaler

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