Compress a video for Instagram
Instagram re-encodes everything you upload. You cannot stop that, but you can hand it a file that is already 1080p H.264 at a sane bitrate — which is why a pre-compressed upload usually looks better than the 4K original, not worse.
Compress a video for Instagram
Pick a quality level; the file comes out as big as this clip needs.
Choose a video or drop it here
Read by this page, never uploaded. MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, AVI, WMV, FLV and more.
Resolution, frame rate, audio, codec
Nothing is uploaded
FFmpeg runs in this tab. Turn your Wi-Fi off after the page loads and it still works.
Hit an exact size
Say "under 25 MB" and the bitrate is solved for you, two-pass.
No account, no watermark
No sign-up, no email, no logo burned into your video.
No file-size cap
No 100 MB paywall. The only limit is your browser's memory, around 2 GB.
Instagram re-encodes everything. Compress for that, not against it.
Whatever you upload, Instagram transcodes it to its own specification before anyone sees it. You cannot prevent that. What you can do is hand it a file that is already close to the target, so its pass has little work left to do — which is why a sensibly compressed 1080p upload usually looks better on the feed than the untouched 4K original.
The specification worth matching
| Setting | Reels and feed video |
|---|---|
| Resolution | 1080 × 1920 (9:16) for Reels, 1080 × 1350 (4:5) for feed |
| Codec | H.264 |
| Frame rate | 30 fps |
| Audio | AAC, 128 kbps |
| Bitrate | Roughly 5,000–8,000 kbps at 1080p |
Set Resolution to 1080p and Frame rate to 30, pick High quality, and leave the codec on H.264. Uploading at more than 1080p gains you nothing: Instagram downscales it and you have paid in upload time for pixels that were discarded.
The mistakes that actually cost quality
- Uploading 60 fps. It is halved to 30 anyway, and the transcoder's choice of which frames to drop is not better than yours.
- Uploading a file that is already heavily compressed. Re-compressing a compressed file is where visible mush comes from. Go back to the original whenever you can.
- Wrong aspect ratio. A 16:9 landscape clip posted as a Reel gets pillarboxed or cropped. Fix the framing in an editor first — this tool changes size, not shape.
- H.265. Works, but there is no benefit here: Instagram is re-encoding it regardless, and H.265 costs you four times the encode time in a browser tab.
TikTok and YouTube Shorts
Same advice, same settings. All three platforms accept far larger files than you need to give them, and all three re-encode. 1080p, H.264, 30 fps, high quality is the upload that survives each of them best.
How it works
Pick your video
It is read straight from your disk by this page. No upload, no queue, no account.
Choose a quality level
Balanced is visually indistinguishable on a phone or laptop at normal viewing distance.
Compress in the tab
FFmpeg runs in WebAssembly on your own machine. The first run downloads a 31 MB engine, once per browser.
Download it
The result is handed back as a file. Nothing was sent anywhere, so there is nothing to delete afterwards.
Compress for a specific limit
Compress a video for email
Targets 20 MB by default.
Open the compressor →Compress a video for Discord
Targets 9 MB by default.
Open the compressor →Compress a video for WhatsApp
Targets 15 MB by default.
Open the compressor →Compress a video to 8 MB
Targets 7.5 MB by default.
Open the compressor →Compress a video to 25 MB
Targets 24 MB by default.
Open the compressor →Compress an MP4
Quality-based, no target to pick.
Open the compressor →Compress a MOV file
Quality-based, no target to pick.
Open the compressor →Reduce a video's file size
Quality-based, no target to pick.
Open the compressor →Compress a 4K video
Quality-based, no target to pick.
Open the compressor →Questions people actually ask
Short answers here, the full story in the guides.
Is my video uploaded to a server?
No. The compressor is FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly and it runs inside this browser tab. Your file is read from disk by the page, processed in memory, and handed back to you as a download. You can load the page, disconnect from the internet, and compress anyway — which is the simplest proof there is.
Does compressing a video lose quality?
Yes, always — compression works by throwing information away. The honest question is whether you can see it. At a sensible bitrate for the resolution, most people cannot tell on a phone or laptop screen. Anyone promising "no quality loss" is describing the perception, not the file.
How do I compress a video to an exact size?
Switch the tool to Target size and type the number. It reads the clip's duration, subtracts the audio budget, solves for the video bitrate that fits, and encodes two-pass so the result lands under the target rather than near it.
Is there a file size limit?
No limit we impose, but a browser tab is bounded by WebAssembly's ~2 GB of memory, and a re-encode needs roughly three times the file's size free. Files up to a few hundred MB are comfortable. Above about 1 GB, the iPhone app is the better tool.
Is there a watermark?
No. No watermark, no logo, no intro frame, no account, and no upload cap to unlock by paying. The output is your video, compressed.
Which format should I compress to?
MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio, unless you have a specific reason not to. It plays on effectively everything. H.265 gives you a smaller file at the same quality but encodes much slower here and is refused by some uploaders and older devices.
Compressing on a phone?
The iPhone app does this on the device, with the hardware encoder.