Compress Video to 10 MB
10 MB holds about 19 seconds of comfortable 1080p, or 35 seconds at 720p. It is the default ceiling on a Microsoft Exchange mailbox, and the cap some older Discord clients still enforce.
Free, no watermark, no account needed. The compressor below is preset to 9.5 MB so the output lands under 10 MB rather than a couple of percent over it.
Drag and drop a video file to start
Max file size: 500 MB free, up to 1.5 GB with a paid plan
Supported: mp4, webm, mov, mkv, avi, wmv and 33 formats in all
No watermark · files are processed in the cloud and auto-deleted
Where 10 MB comes from
Two separate things land on 10 MB. Microsoft ships a 10 MB default attachment limit for Exchange accounts, which is why work email so often refuses files that a personal Gmail account accepts. And Discord’s free tier was 10 MB until August 2026 — it is 20 MB now, but some of Discord’s own help pages still say 10, and older mobile clients can still enforce the old number.
- Email — Exchange / work mail10 MB
Microsoft’s documented default for Exchange mailboxes, and the reason work email is stricter than personal.
How long a video fits in 10 MB
The longest clip each resolution can carry inside 10 MB. “Comfortable” means the bitrate clears what that frame size wants; “watchable” means it is soft but holds together. Both columns are arithmetic on the size and the duration; the thresholds they are compared against are recommendations, documented under the table below.
| Resolution | Comfortable up to | Watchable up to | Needs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1080p | 19s | 38s | 4,000 kbps |
| 720p | 35s | 66s | 2,200 kbps |
| 480p | 72s(1 min) | 130s | 1,000 kbps |
| 360p | 112s(2 min) | 192s | 600 kbps |
Method: 10 MB spread over the duration, minus 128 kbps of audio and 2% container overhead, then compared against H.264 thresholds derived from published bitrate ladders and reduced by about a third for re-encoded source. A minute inside 10 MB leaves 1242 kbps for video, which is exact. Which resolution that is enough for is a recommendation, not a measurement.
What 10 MB buys at each length
The table above reads by resolution; this one reads by duration. Same arithmetic, the other way round — pick your clip length and see what is left to spend.
| Video length | Bitrate left for video | Resolution it carries | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15s | 5,353 kbps | 1080p | Looks fine |
| 30s | 2,612 kbps | 720p | Looks fine |
| 1 min | 1,242 kbps | 480p | Looks fine |
| 2 min | 557 kbps | 480p | Watchable |
| 5 min | 146 kbps | — | Visibly rough |
| 10 min | 9 kbps | — | Visibly rough |
Method: the bitrate column is arithmetic — 10 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.
10 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, grey means pick a smaller frame. Reading down a column tells you how long a clip can get before that resolution stops being worth it on a 10 MB limit.
Source: Computed, not measured — no encoder was run to produce this figure · Method: 10 MB spread over the duration, minus 128 kbps audio and 2% container overhead. Thresholds from published H.264 bitrate ladders, reduced by about a third for re-encoded source.
What goes wrong at 10 MB
On work email, 10 MB is the default and not a promise: your administrator may have raised it, and you cannot assume they did — nor that the person you are sending to has the same setting. On Discord, 10 MB is the number to use when the upload absolutely has to work on a client you do not control; if it is your own current desktop app, you have 20 MB and should use it.
How to compress a video to 10 MB
Drop the video in
The compressor above is already set to 9.5 MB — just under 10 MB, so the result lands inside the limit rather than a percent over it.
Trim first if it is long
At 10 MB, length costs more than any quality setting. Cutting a clip in half doubles the bitrate available to every frame that is left.
Download and check the hard frames
Look at motion, faces and gradients rather than the average. Those are where compression fails first, and where a preview at full size tells you something a thumbnail cannot.
10 MB questions
Why does my work email reject a file Gmail accepted?
Because they are different limits. Gmail documents 25 MB; Microsoft’s default for an Exchange mailbox is 10 MB. Your administrator can raise it, but the default is what most mailboxes run. A file that sails through a personal account can bounce off a corporate one at less than half the size.
Is Discord’s limit 10 MB or 20 MB?
20 MB on the free tier since August 2026. 10 MB is the previous value, and it survives in two places: Discord help pages that have not been updated, and older mobile clients that still enforce it. If an upload under 20 MB is being refused on a phone, this is usually why.
How long a video fits in 10 MB?
About 19 seconds at 1080p, 35 seconds at 720p, and 72 seconds at 480p, before the bitrate drops below what that resolution wants. The table above works this out for the lengths in between.
Can I email a 1-minute video at 10 MB?
Yes, but not at 1080p. A minute inside 10 MB leaves roughly 1,240 kbps for video, which is comfortable at 480p and watchable at 720p. If the content is a screen recording or a talking head it will hold up; if it is handheld footage with motion, drop the resolution rather than the quality setting.
The reasoning behind these numbers
Other target sizes
Not one of these? Work out any size and length in the calculator — same arithmetic, plus what we measured at the bitrate it gives you.