Video upload size limits by platform
VidSmaller publishes the video upload size limit for 15 platforms, with every figure linked to that platform's own documentation and dated with the day a human last checked it.
- Platforms covered
- 15
- Limit figures
- 32
- Most recent check
- 2026-10-30
- Oldest check
- 2026-09-14
- Machine-readable
- JSON and CSV, CORS open
- Terms
- Quote it, with a link back
Download: /platform-limits.json · /platform-limits.csv · API docs
Discord
Verified 2026-09-14
| Tier | Limit | What actually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 20 MB | Raised from 10 MB on 13 August 2026. Discord’s own File Attachments FAQ still said 10 MB at verifiedAt, so treat 10 MB as the fallback if an upload well under 20 MB is actually refused. The same update made mobile measure the file BEFORE the app’s own compression, matching desktop — so phones reject some files they used to accept. |
| Nitro Basic | 50 MB | — |
| Nitro | 500 MB | — |
We compress to 19 MB for Discord, below the headline cap — a target-size encode lands within a couple of percent, and two percent over a hard ceiling is a failed upload. Compress video for Discord
Verified 2026-09-14
| Tier | Limit | What actually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Gmail | 25 MB | 25 MB is the whole message, measured after base64 encoding (~1.37x the raw file once MIME line breaks count). Gmail on the web does not bounce above it — it swaps the attachment for a Drive link. SMTP clients (Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail) do bounce. ~18 MB raw clears both. |
| Outlook.com | 20 MB | — |
| Exchange / work mail | 10 MB | Microsoft ships a 10 MB default for Exchange accounts. Your administrator may have raised it; you cannot assume they did. |
We compress to 18 MB for email, below the headline cap — a target-size encode lands within a couple of percent, and two percent over a hard ceiling is a failed upload. Compress video for email
Gmail
Verified 2026-10-30
| Tier | Limit | What actually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Message total | 25 MB | Gmail measures the whole encoded message, not the raw video. Base64 and MIME overhead add about 37%, so a 25 MB file does not fit inside a 25 MB message. Gmail on the web replaces oversized attachments with a Drive link. |
We compress to 18 MB for Gmail, below the headline cap — a target-size encode lands within a couple of percent, and two percent over a hard ceiling is a failed upload. Compress video for Gmail
Outlook
Verified 2026-10-30
| Tier | Limit | What actually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Outlook.com / internet email account | 20 MB | Microsoft documents 20 MB as the default total message size for internet email accounts in Outlook. Encoding overhead means the raw attachment must be smaller. |
| Exchange account default | 10 MB | Microsoft documents a 10 MB default for Exchange accounts. An administrator can raise it, but senders cannot assume they did. |
We compress to 14 MB for Outlook, below the headline cap — a target-size encode lands within a couple of percent, and two percent over a hard ceiling is a failed upload. Compress video for Outlook
YouTube
Verified 2026-10-30
| Tier | Limit | What actually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Verified account upload | 262144 MB | YouTube accepts up to 256 GB or 12 hours, whichever comes first. Accounts must be verified to upload videos longer than 15 minutes. |
We compress to 1000 MB for YouTube, below the headline cap — a target-size encode lands within a couple of percent, and two percent over a hard ceiling is a failed upload. Compress video for YouTube
Verified 2026-10-30
| Tier | Limit | What actually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Video in comments | 1024 MB | Reddit documents a file under 1 GB and recommends staying under 300 MB for video comments. The smaller recommendation is the useful target for reliable uploads and downloads. |
We compress to 300 MB for Reddit, below the headline cap — a target-size encode lands within a couple of percent, and two percent over a hard ceiling is a failed upload. Compress video for Reddit
Verified 2026-10-30
| Tier | Limit | What actually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Video upload | 4096 MB | Facebook documents a 4 GB maximum. It re-encodes uploaded video, so a clean H.264 source is more useful than filling the entire allowance. |
We compress to 500 MB for Facebook, below the headline cap — a target-size encode lands within a couple of percent, and two percent over a hard ceiling is a failed upload. Compress video for Facebook
Messenger
Verified 2026-10-30
| Tier | Limit | What actually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| File sent in chat | 100 MB | Meta announced support for files up to 100 MB in Messenger chats. Sending as a file is the documented path; media sent as a photo or video may be processed differently. |
We compress to 95 MB for Messenger, below the headline cap — a target-size encode lands within a couple of percent, and two percent over a hard ceiling is a failed upload. Compress video for Messenger
Verified 2026-10-30
| Tier | Limit | What actually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Video post | 5120 MB | LinkedIn accepts videos up to 5 GB and 15 minutes. The duration limit often arrives before the file-size limit for normal H.264 uploads. |
We compress to 500 MB for LinkedIn, below the headline cap — a target-size encode lands within a couple of percent, and two percent over a hard ceiling is a failed upload. Compress video for LinkedIn
Verified 2026-09-14
| Tier | Limit | What actually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Video in chat (mobile) | 16 MB | The 16 MB figure is what almost every guide quotes and what the app behaves like in practice — but WhatsApp does not document it. Their help page states connection-dependent defaults instead (below). Treat 16 MB as the conservative target rather than as a published cap. |
| Video in chat (slow connection) | 64 MB | WhatsApp’s documented default on a slower connection, which also downscales to 480p. This is NOT a Web/Desktop figure — the same help page gives the same connection-based split on iPhone, Android and Web. |
| Video in chat (fast connection) | 100 MB | WhatsApp’s documented default on a faster connection, downscaled to 720p. |
| Sent as a document | 2048 MB | Bypasses re-compression entirely and preserves your quality, but loses the inline preview and autoplay. |
We compress to 15 MB for WhatsApp, below the headline cap — a target-size encode lands within a couple of percent, and two percent over a hard ceiling is a failed upload. Compress video for WhatsApp
Telegram
Verified 2026-09-14
| Tier | Limit | What actually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 2048 MB | — |
| Premium | 4096 MB | — |
| Bot API | 50 MB | Bots can only upload 50 MB and download 20 MB through the standard API — far below what a human account can send. This trips up almost everyone automating Telegram. Running your own local Bot API server lifts uploads to 2000 MB and removes the download limit entirely; Telegram documents this as the supported escape hatch. |
We compress to 1900 MB for Telegram, below the headline cap — a target-size encode lands within a couple of percent, and two percent over a hard ceiling is a failed upload. Compress video for Telegram
Slack
Verified 2026-09-14
| Tier | Limit | What actually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Every plan | 1024 MB | Unusually, the per-file cap does not change with your plan. What changes is retention: on the Free plan you lose visibility of files older than 90 days. |
| Recorded clips | 1024 MB | Slack’s built-in audio and video clips are capped at 5 minutes regardless of file size. |
We compress to 200 MB for Slack, below the headline cap — a target-size encode lands within a couple of percent, and two percent over a hard ceiling is a failed upload. Compress video for Slack
Verified 2026-09-14
| Tier | Limit | What actually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Reels | 4096 MB | The 4 GB cap is almost never what stops you. Instagram re-encodes everything you upload, so a bloated file just gets crushed harder by their encoder — you get a better result by handing them a clean 1080x1920 H.264 file at 8–12 Mbps than by uploading your 3 GB master. |
| Feed video | 4096 MB | — |
| Stories | 4096 MB | Up to 60 seconds per slide. Instagram stopped chopping sub-60-second videos into 15-second segments in September 2022 — any guide still describing that split, including an earlier version of this page, is stale. |
We compress to 100 MB for Instagram, below the headline cap — a target-size encode lands within a couple of percent, and two percent over a hard ceiling is a failed upload. Compress video for Instagram
TikTok
Verified 2026-09-14
| Tier | Limit | What actually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Android app | 72 MB | By far the tightest limit of the three, and the one nobody documents. If your upload fails on an Android phone but works on a friend’s iPhone, this is why. |
| iOS app | 288 MB | — |
| Web (TikTok Studio) | 10240 MB | Accepts very large files, but uploads over ~500 MB slow processing down and fail more often. |
We compress to 70 MB for TikTok, below the headline cap — a target-size encode lands within a couple of percent, and two percent over a hard ceiling is a failed upload. Compress video for TikTok
X (Twitter)
Verified 2026-09-14
| Tier | Limit | What actually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | 512 MB | Capped at 2 minutes 20 seconds of runtime, which bites long before the file size does. |
| Premium (web / iOS) | 16384 MB | Up to 4 hours. |
| Premium (Android) | 16384 MB | Up to 10 minutes. |
We compress to 480 MB for X (Twitter), below the headline cap — a target-size encode lands within a couple of percent, and two percent over a hard ceiling is a failed upload. Compress video for X (Twitter)
Units, and what this does not establish
limit_mb is the figure the platform publishes, in the unit the platform publishes it. Platforms differ on whether a megabyte is 1,000,000 or 1,048,576 bytes; where that difference changes the outcome, the tier note says so.
- These are the documented ceilings, not measured ones. Where a platform enforces something different from what it documents, the tier note says so and the documented figure stays in the data.
- Limits move without announcement. The per-platform verified_at date is the only claim being made about freshness; anything older than a few weeks should be re-checked against the linked source.
- Audio and container overhead are not deducted. A file that measures one byte under a cap can still be refused, which is why the compressor targets below each ceiling rather than at it.
How to cite this
Free to quote and reuse with attribution to VidSmaller and a link to https://vidsmaller.com/platform-limits.
VidSmaller, “Video upload size limits by platform”, verified 2026-10-30. https://vidsmaller.com/platform-limits
These numbers are the presets behind the compressor. Same source file, so the tool and this table cannot disagree.