Compress a video to 8 MB
8 MB is the old Discord cap and still the number most bots, embeds and forums enforce. Targeting 7.5 MB leaves room for container overhead so the file really does land under 8.
Compress a video to 8 MB
Pick a target and the bitrate is solved for you.
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.
Why 8 MB is still the number
8 MB was Discord's free upload limit for years. The limit is 10 MB now, but the 8 MB convention outlived it: bots, embed proxies, forum attachments, bug trackers and archive mirrors all still enforce it. Hitting 8 MB means the file works everywhere, including the places that never updated.
The target here is 7.5 MB rather than 8. Container headers, the moov atom and per-frame overhead are real bytes, and rate control aims at an average rather than a ceiling. The half-megabyte of headroom is what turns "about 8 MB" into "under 8 MB".
The arithmetic, if you want it
Total bitrate is just size divided by time:
bitrate (kbps) = target MB × 8,192 ÷ duration in seconds
So 7.5 MB across a 30-second clip is about 2,048 kbps total. Subtract the audio — 128 kbps is typical — and roughly 1,900 kbps is left for the picture, which is a perfectly good 1080p30. The same 7.5 MB across five minutes gives you about 200 kbps total, and that is a 360p job however you slice it.
The tool does this for you, including the part people get wrong: subtracting the audio budget before solving, rather than after.
Getting a long clip under 8 MB
In order of how much they help:
- Drop the resolution. 1080p → 720p removes 56% of the pixels; → 480p removes 80%. Nothing else comes close.
- Drop the frame rate to 30, or 24 for talking heads. Halving frame rate is close to halving the work.
- Cut the audio to 64 kbps, or remove it. On a five-minute clip in an 8 MB box, audio at 128 kbps is eating a quarter of the whole budget.
- Switch to H.265 for roughly 25–30% more efficiency — but only where you know the destination plays it. Discord inline playback often does not.
How it works
Pick your video
It is read straight from your disk by this page. No upload, no queue, no account.
Set the target size
Type a number, or use a preset that matches the real limit. The bitrate is solved from the clip’s length.
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 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 →Compress a video for Instagram
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.