{
  "name": "Video upload size limits by platform",
  "summary": "VidSmaller publishes the video upload size limit for 8 platforms, with every figure linked to that platform's own documentation and dated with the day a human last checked it.",
  "publisher": "VidSmaller",
  "url": "https://vidsmaller.com/platform-limits",
  "csv": "https://vidsmaller.com/platform-limits.csv",
  "terms": "Free to quote and reuse with attribution to VidSmaller and a link to https://vidsmaller.com/platform-limits.",
  "units": "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.",
  "caveats": [
    "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."
  ],
  "verified_at_newest": "2026-09-14",
  "verified_at_oldest": "2026-09-14",
  "platform_count": 8,
  "tier_count": 24,
  "platforms": [
    {
      "platform": "Discord",
      "key": "discord",
      "page": "https://vidsmaller.com/compress-video-for-discord",
      "verified_at": "2026-09-14",
      "recommended_target_mb": 19,
      "tiers": [
        {
          "tier": "Free",
          "limit_mb": 20,
          "note": "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."
        },
        {
          "tier": "Nitro Basic",
          "limit_mb": 50,
          "note": null
        },
        {
          "tier": "Nitro",
          "limit_mb": 500,
          "note": null
        }
      ],
      "sources": [
        {
          "label": "Discord — File Attachments FAQ",
          "url": "https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/25444343291031-File-Attachments-FAQ"
        },
        {
          "label": "Discord — Account caps",
          "url": "https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/33694251638295-Discord-Account-Caps-Server-Caps-and-More"
        },
        {
          "label": "@discord — 20 MB announcement, incl. the mobile measurement change (13 Aug 2026)",
          "url": "https://x.com/discord/status/2087987317298360489"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "platform": "email",
      "key": "email",
      "page": "https://vidsmaller.com/compress-video-for-email",
      "verified_at": "2026-09-14",
      "recommended_target_mb": 18,
      "tiers": [
        {
          "tier": "Gmail",
          "limit_mb": 25,
          "note": "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."
        },
        {
          "tier": "Outlook.com",
          "limit_mb": 20,
          "note": null
        },
        {
          "tier": "Exchange / work mail",
          "limit_mb": 10,
          "note": "Microsoft ships a 10 MB default for Exchange accounts. Your administrator may have raised it; you cannot assume they did."
        }
      ],
      "sources": [
        {
          "label": "Google — Send attachments with your Gmail message",
          "url": "https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6584"
        },
        {
          "label": "Microsoft — Reduce attachment size",
          "url": "https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/reduce-attachment-size-to-send-large-files-with-outlook"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "platform": "WhatsApp",
      "key": "whatsapp",
      "page": "https://vidsmaller.com/compress-video-for-whatsapp",
      "verified_at": "2026-09-14",
      "recommended_target_mb": 15,
      "tiers": [
        {
          "tier": "Video in chat (mobile)",
          "limit_mb": 16,
          "note": "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."
        },
        {
          "tier": "Video in chat (slow connection)",
          "limit_mb": 64,
          "note": "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."
        },
        {
          "tier": "Video in chat (fast connection)",
          "limit_mb": 100,
          "note": "WhatsApp’s documented default on a faster connection, downscaled to 720p."
        },
        {
          "tier": "Sent as a document",
          "limit_mb": 2048,
          "note": "Bypasses re-compression entirely and preserves your quality, but loses the inline preview and autoplay."
        }
      ],
      "sources": [
        {
          "label": "WhatsApp — How to send media, contacts, or location (states the 100 MB / 64 MB connection split and the 2 GB document cap)",
          "url": "https://faq.whatsapp.com/453914586839706/"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "platform": "Telegram",
      "key": "telegram",
      "page": "https://vidsmaller.com/compress-video-for-telegram",
      "verified_at": "2026-09-14",
      "recommended_target_mb": 1900,
      "tiers": [
        {
          "tier": "Free",
          "limit_mb": 2048,
          "note": null
        },
        {
          "tier": "Premium",
          "limit_mb": 4096,
          "note": null
        },
        {
          "tier": "Bot API",
          "limit_mb": 50,
          "note": "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."
        }
      ],
      "sources": [
        {
          "label": "Telegram — Premium FAQ",
          "url": "https://telegram.org/faq_premium"
        },
        {
          "label": "Telegram — 700 Million Users and Telegram Premium",
          "url": "https://telegram.org/blog/700-million-and-premium"
        },
        {
          "label": "Telegram — Bot API (the 50 MB / 20 MB caps and the local server escape hatch)",
          "url": "https://core.telegram.org/bots/api"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "platform": "Slack",
      "key": "slack",
      "page": "https://vidsmaller.com/compress-video-for-slack",
      "verified_at": "2026-09-14",
      "recommended_target_mb": 200,
      "tiers": [
        {
          "tier": "Every plan",
          "limit_mb": 1024,
          "note": "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."
        },
        {
          "tier": "Recorded clips",
          "limit_mb": 1024,
          "note": "Slack’s built-in audio and video clips are capped at 5 minutes regardless of file size."
        }
      ],
      "sources": [
        {
          "label": "Slack — Add files to Slack",
          "url": "https://slack.com/help/articles/201330736-Add-files-to-Slack"
        },
        {
          "label": "Slack — Usage limits for free workspaces",
          "url": "https://slack.com/help/articles/115002422943-Usage-limits-for-free-workspaces"
        },
        {
          "label": "Slack — Record audio and video clips (the 5-minute clip cap, on every plan)",
          "url": "https://slack.com/help/articles/4406235165587-Record-audio-and-video-clips-in-Slack"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "platform": "Instagram",
      "key": "instagram",
      "page": "https://vidsmaller.com/compress-video-for-instagram",
      "verified_at": "2026-09-14",
      "recommended_target_mb": 100,
      "tiers": [
        {
          "tier": "Reels",
          "limit_mb": 4096,
          "note": "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."
        },
        {
          "tier": "Feed video",
          "limit_mb": 4096,
          "note": null
        },
        {
          "tier": "Stories",
          "limit_mb": 4096,
          "note": "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."
        }
      ],
      "sources": [
        {
          "label": "Instagram — Reel size & aspect ratios",
          "url": "https://help.instagram.com/1038071743007909"
        },
        {
          "label": "TechCrunch — Instagram Stories under 60 seconds are no longer broken up into clips (23 Sep 2022)",
          "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/23/instagram-stories-under-60-seconds-no-longer-broken-up/"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "platform": "TikTok",
      "key": "tiktok",
      "page": "https://vidsmaller.com/compress-video-for-tiktok",
      "verified_at": "2026-09-14",
      "recommended_target_mb": 70,
      "tiers": [
        {
          "tier": "Android app",
          "limit_mb": 72,
          "note": "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."
        },
        {
          "tier": "iOS app",
          "limit_mb": 288,
          "note": null
        },
        {
          "tier": "Web (TikTok Studio)",
          "limit_mb": 10240,
          "note": "Accepts very large files, but uploads over ~500 MB slow processing down and fail more often."
        }
      ],
      "sources": [
        {
          "label": "TikTok Studio — upload (the web uploader itself; TikTok publishes no page stating the in-app caps)",
          "url": "https://www.tiktok.com/tiktokstudio/upload"
        },
        {
          "label": "TikTok for Developers — Media Transfer Guide (chunking rules, the closest thing to documented size handling)",
          "url": "https://developers.tiktok.com/doc/content-posting-api-media-transfer-guide"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "platform": "X (Twitter)",
      "key": "twitter",
      "page": "https://vidsmaller.com/compress-video-for-twitter",
      "verified_at": "2026-09-14",
      "recommended_target_mb": 480,
      "tiers": [
        {
          "tier": "Standard",
          "limit_mb": 512,
          "note": "Capped at 2 minutes 20 seconds of runtime, which bites long before the file size does."
        },
        {
          "tier": "Premium (web / iOS)",
          "limit_mb": 16384,
          "note": "Up to 4 hours."
        },
        {
          "tier": "Premium (Android)",
          "limit_mb": 16384,
          "note": "Up to 10 minutes."
        }
      ],
      "sources": [
        {
          "label": "X — About longer videos for Premium subscribers (the 4 hour / 16 GB / Android 10 min figures)",
          "url": "https://help.x.com/en/using-x/premium-longer-videos"
        },
        {
          "label": "X — Media best practices",
          "url": "https://docs.x.com/x-api/media/quickstart/best-practices"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}