Compress Video to 8 MB
8 MB holds about 15 seconds of comfortable 1080p, or 28 seconds at 720p. It is also the only size on this site that is not any platform’s documented limit.
Free, no watermark, no account needed. The compressor below is preset to 7.5 MB so the output lands under 8 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 8 MB comes from
Nothing we can verify currently requires 8 MB. It is a habit number: a generation of guides and small tools were built around it, and people still target it because it is the figure they remember. Every current cap we track is higher — Discord’s free tier is 20 MB, a default Exchange mailbox is 10 MB, WhatsApp’s in-chat video is 16 MB.
No platform we track publishes 8 MB as a limit. Every cap in our verified set is listed on the platform pages, and none of them is 8 MB. If something is enforcing it on you, it is a local rule rather than a published one — which is worth knowing before you compress to it.
How long a video fits in 8 MB
The longest clip each resolution can carry inside 8 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 | 15s | 30s | 4,000 kbps |
| 720p | 28s | 53s | 2,200 kbps |
| 480p | 58s | 104s | 1,000 kbps |
| 360p | 90s(2 min) | 153s | 600 kbps |
Method: 8 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 8 MB leaves 968 kbps for video, which is exact. Which resolution that is enough for is a recommendation, not a measurement.
What 8 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10s | 6,449 kbps | 1080p | Looks fine |
| 15s | 4,256 kbps | 1080p | Looks fine |
| 30s | 2,064 kbps | 480p | Looks fine |
| 1 min | 968 kbps | 360p | Looks fine |
| 2 min | 420 kbps | 360p | Visibly rough |
| 5 min | 91 kbps | — | Visibly rough |
Method: the bitrate column is arithmetic — 8 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.
8 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 8 MB limit.
Source: Computed, not measured — no encoder was run to produce this figure · Method: 8 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 8 MB
Check what you are actually up against before aiming here. If the real ceiling is 20 MB, compressing to 8 MB throws away 60% of your allowance and the quality that went with it — a 30-second 1080p clip that would have looked clean at 19 MB comes out visibly soft at 8. Target 8 MB when something genuinely enforces it, or when you have been burned by a cap you do not trust and 15 seconds is all you need.
How to compress a video to 8 MB
Drop the video in
The compressor above is already set to 7.5 MB — just under 8 MB, so the result lands inside the limit rather than a percent over it.
Trim first if it is long
At 8 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.
8 MB questions
What still requires 8 MB?
Nothing in the set of platforms we verify. Discord’s free tier is 20 MB per file, Outlook.com is 20 MB, a default Exchange mailbox is 10 MB, and WhatsApp sends in-chat video up to 16 MB. If a form or an administrator is enforcing 8 MB on you, that is a local rule rather than a published platform limit.
How long can a video be at 8 MB?
About 15 seconds at 1080p before quality starts to suffer, 28 seconds at 720p, and 58 seconds at 480p. Past roughly 90 seconds you are below what 360p wants, and the result looks like it.
Is 8 MB enough for a gameplay clip?
For a short highlight, yes — screen-captured and game footage compresses far better than camera footage, because large parts of the frame are flat and static. Our own measurements put screen content around 89 VMAF at a setting where camera footage falls to 74. A 30-second clip at 8 MB is workable for gameplay and rough for handheld video of the same length.
Should I use 8 MB or 10 MB?
Use 10 MB unless something forces 8. The extra 2 MB is 25% more data for the same footage, which is the difference between 15 and 19 seconds of comfortable 1080p, and 10 MB is at least a real documented cap in two places.
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.