Compress Video for X (Twitter) (512 MB Limit)
X (Twitter) caps uploads at Standard 512 MB, Premium (web / iOS) 16 GB, Premium (Android) 16 GB. VidSmaller compresses any video down to 480 MB so it fits on the first attempt — H.264 MP4 out, no watermark, nothing to install, no account needed to try it. Cloud encoding keeps running if the tab closes. The no-account trial accepts videos up to 3 minutes and 200 MB; paid plans accept files up to 1.5 GB.
On X, the file size limit is almost never what stops you. A standard account gets 512 MB — but only 2 minutes 20 seconds of runtime, and that is the wall nearly everyone hits first.
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Supported: mp4, webm, mov, mkv, avi, wmv and 33 formats in all
X (Twitter) file size limits, and what they really mean
A standard account can post 512 MB and 2 minutes 20 seconds. X Premium raises both dramatically — up to 16 GB and four hours on web and iOS, though Android Premium is still capped at 10 minutes. Because the duration limit binds first, a standard-account video has 512 MB to spend on at most 140 seconds, which is a genuinely generous bitrate budget.
| Plan / upload method | Maximum file size |
|---|---|
| Standard | 512 MB Capped at 2 minutes 20 seconds of runtime, which bites long before the file size does. |
| Premium (web / iOS) | 16 GB Up to 4 hours. |
| Premium (Android) | 16 GB Up to 10 minutes. |
Limits verified 2026-09-14. Sources: X — About longer videos for Premium subscribers (the 4 hour / 16 GB / Android 10 min figures) · X — Media best practices
What 480 MB actually buys you
Every other page tells you the limit and stops there. The limit is the easy half. Here is the half that decides whether your video is watchable: at a 480 MB target, this is exactly how much bitrate is left for each duration, and the largest resolution that bitrate can carry without falling apart.
| Video length | Bitrate left for video | Resolution it carries | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30s | 131,405 kbps | 4K | Looks fine |
| 1 min | 65,639 kbps | 4K | Looks fine |
| 2 min | 28,058 kbps | 4K | Looks fine |
Method: the bitrate column is arithmetic — 480 MB spread across the duration, minus 128 kbps for stereo audio and 2% for container overhead. It is a hard ceiling, not an estimate. The resolution and verdict columns are a recommendation, derived from published H.264 bitrate ladders and pulled down about a third, because re-encoding footage that has already been compressed once survives lower bitrates than encoding a clean master does. Deliberately conservative — we would rather under-promise than tell you a video will look fine when it will not.
480 MB across lengths and resolutions
The left column is what you have to spend at each length; the cells are what each resolution needs. Green means you clear it comfortably, amber means it is watchable but soft, and grey means pick a smaller frame. Reading down a column shows how long a clip can get before that resolution stops being worthwhile on X (Twitter).
Source: Computed, not measured — no encoder was run to produce this figure · Method: 480 MB spread over the duration, minus 128 kbps audio and 2% container overhead. Thresholds come from published H.264 bitrate ladders, reduced by about a third for re-encoded source.
How to compress a video for X
Drop your video in
MP4, MOV, MKV, AVI, WebM and 33 formats in all. Nothing to install — your browser uploads over a one-time link and the file never touches a third party.
The target is already 480 MB
We pre-set it below the hard ceiling on purpose. A target-size encode usually lands within a couple of percent of the number you gave it, but we have measured footage that overshoots by up to a tenth — and landing over a hard limit means the upload fails. Change it if you want a different number.
Download and upload
Encoding runs on our servers, so you can close the tab. The result comes back with no watermark on any plan, in an MP4 that X will accept.
X (Twitter) compression FAQs
What is the X (Twitter) video limit?
512 MB and 2 minutes 20 seconds on a standard account. X Premium goes to 16 GB and up to four hours on web and iOS; Premium on Android is limited to 10 minutes. In practice the duration cap is what people hit — very few 140-second videos come anywhere near 512 MB.
Why does my video fail to upload even though it is small enough?
Usually duration, not size. X also rejects uploads on resolution, aspect ratio, frame rate, bitrate, container and audio codec, and it reports almost all of these as the same generic failure. Exporting MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio at 1280x720 or 1920x1080, 30fps, eliminates every one of those causes at once.
How do I post a video longer than 2 minutes 20 seconds?
Subscribe to Premium, or trim it. Trimming is usually the better answer: a 140-second cut of the interesting part outperforms a 12-minute upload on a platform where the median viewer decides in the first three seconds.
What quality should I upload to X?
Since a 140-second video has 512 MB available, you can afford roughly 30 Mbps — far more than the content needs. There is no reason to compress hard here. Export 1080p H.264 at 8 to 12 Mbps, keep it well under the ceiling, and X will re-encode it far more gently than it would a file that arrives near the limit.
The reasoning behind these numbers
- Bitrate, and the 512 MB ceilingThe limit is generous; the encoder your video passes through afterwards is not.
- You cannot reach 512 MB in 2 minutes 20The standard account is capped on runtime before it is capped on size — at that length 100 MB is already a comfortable 1080p, and the file-size limit never comes up.
- Picking a quality targetMeasured VMAF for screen, animation and camera footage at six CRF values.
- Cross-posting the same clip to TikTokX gives you 512 MB and 140 seconds; TikTok gives you 10 minutes and, on Android, 72 MB. The binding constraint swaps ends.