Terms of Service

Last updated: 6 September 2026

The short version

Compress videos you have the right to compress.
Your video stays yours. We only get the licence needed to encode it and hand it back.
Credits are charged when a job starts and refunded automatically if it fails.
Cancel any time; the plan runs to the end of the period you already paid for.
We run on third-party infrastructure and can't promise perfect uptime — so keep your original files.

1. Who this is with

These Terms are an agreement between you and VidSmaller ("we", "us"), covering vidsmaller.com and every part of the service reachable from it. By uploading a file, creating an account or paying us, you accept them. If you are using VidSmaller for an employer or client, you confirm you can agree on their behalf.

You must be at least 13 years old (or the minimum digital consent age where you live) to use the service.

2. What the service is

VidSmaller is a cloud video compressor. You upload a video, choose a compression mode — preset, target size, constant quality (CRF), resolution or maximum bitrate — and we return a re-encoded file. The encoding itself runs on a third-party processing provider; the rest (accounts, credits, quotas, delivery) is ours.

Compression is lossy by nature. We give you the controls and show the resulting size, but the output is an approximation of the input, and we can't guarantee a specific size, quality score or encoding time for a file we haven't seen. Always keep your original.

3. Accounts

You can compress a couple of files a day without an account. Beyond that you sign in with Google, a magic link or an email code — there is no password to manage.
Keep your mailbox secure: anyone with access to it can sign in as you. Tell us immediately if you think your account is being used by someone else.
One person or organisation per account. Don't create multiple accounts to get around free limits.
You can delete your account at any time. We may suspend or close an account that breaks section 5, and we will tell you why unless the law prevents it.

4. Plans, limits and credits

Plan	Max per file	Batch	Allowance	Result kept
Signed out	200 MB	1 file	4 free jobs per day, per IP	2 hours
Free account	1 GB	3 files	30 credits / month	up to 7 days
Pro	1.5 GB (see note)	10 files	600 credits / month	up to 7 days

Note on the Pro file size. Our product limit for Pro is 5 GB, but the encoding plan we currently pay for accepts less than that. The app always enforces the smaller of the two, and displays the number it will actually accept, so you are never charged for a job the provider is certain to reject. The limit rises automatically when we upgrade.

How credits work

1 credit = 1 billed encoder minute. We charge exactly what our encoding provider charges us, with no markup on the meter itself.
Minimum 1 credit per job. Only the encode is metered — moving your file in and out costs nothing, however long it takes — and the encode is rounded up to a whole minute. So a five-second clip costs the same floor as a five-minute one, and that floor covers any 1080p source up to roughly seven minutes; beyond that the encode crosses into further billed minutes — a 15-minute recording is 2 credits, a 40-minute 4K file is 5.
H.265/HEVC costs more because it is roughly 3.8x slower to encode, and therefore books more minutes.
Charged up front, refunded on failure. Credits are deducted when the job is created and returned automatically — exactly once — if the provider reports a failure.
Monthly plan credits reset each period and do not roll over. Credits from one-time packs do not expire and are spent after your plan credits.
Credits have no cash value, cannot be transferred between accounts and cannot be exchanged for money except as set out in the Refund Policy.

Fair use

Plans are priced for normal human use. Automated bulk pipelines, reselling capacity, or usage far beyond what a person could produce may be throttled or asked to move to a custom arrangement — we'll email you before doing anything. We also reserve a share of daily capacity for paying customers so a spike in free traffic can't stall a paid job.

5. Acceptable use

Don't upload or process content that:

you don't own or have permission to encode (copyright, image rights, confidentiality)
sexualises minors, or was recorded without the consent of the people in it where consent is required
is illegal where you are or where we operate, incites violence, or is intended for harassment
contains malware, or is crafted to attack our processors

And don't:

circumvent quotas, rate limits or file-size checks, or spin up accounts to farm free credits
scrape, reverse engineer or automate the site outside of ordinary browser use
resell VidSmaller as your own compression API or white-label service without a written agreement
attempt to access other users' jobs, files or account data

We can remove content and suspend accounts that break these rules. Because we don't watch your videos, enforcement is mostly complaint- and signal-driven: if you believe content processed here infringes your rights, email support@vidsmaller.com with the details and we will act. Note that files are deleted automatically within hours, so complaints are usually about accounts rather than stored content.

6. Who owns what

Your files

You keep every right you had in your video, and in the compressed output. You grant us only the licence we need to provide the service: to store, transfer and re-encode the file — including passing it to our encoding provider — for as long as the job and its retention window last. That licence ends when the file is deleted. We do not use your footage to train models, advertise, or anything else.

Our side

The site, interface, presets, copy and code are ours or our licensors'. Using the service doesn't transfer any of that to you. Don't copy the site wholesale or use our name and logo in a way that suggests we endorse you.

Feedback

If you send us a bug report, a badly-compressing sample file or a feature idea, we may use it to improve the product without owing you anything. We won't publish your file.

7. Payment and cancellation

Prices are in US dollars and shown on the pricing section before you pay. Payments are processed by Stripe; your card details never reach our servers.
Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each period until cancelled. Cancel from your dashboard at any time — access and credits continue until the end of the period you already paid for.
Taxes may be added where required. You are responsible for any taxes not collected at checkout.
We may change prices with at least 30 days' notice to existing subscribers; the change applies from your next renewal, and you can cancel before then.
Refunds are governed by the Refund Policy, which forms part of these Terms.
If a payment fails, we may pause paid features until it succeeds.

8. Availability, changes and your data

VidSmaller depends on third parties — a hosting platform, a storage provider, a database and an encoding provider. We work to keep it up, but we do not offer an SLA on the plans sold here, and outages, maintenance and provider incidents happen.

We are not a backup service and files are deleted on a short timer. Download your result before its retention window ends and keep your originals. We are not liable for files you no longer have a copy of.

We may add, change or retire features. If we discontinue a paid feature you rely on, or shut the service down, we will give reasonable notice and refund the unused portion of any prepayment.

9. Warranties and liability

The service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the extent the law allows, we disclaim implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement, and we do not warrant that compression will be uninterrupted, error-free or produce a particular result.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, VidSmaller is not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, lost profits, lost data or lost footage. Our total liability for any claim relating to the service is limited to the greater of (a) what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim or (b) USD 50.

Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited — including, for consumers in the EU, UK and similar jurisdictions, your statutory rights.

10. Indemnity

If a third party brings a claim against us because of content you processed — for example a copyright or privacy claim — you agree to cover the reasonable costs of defending it, provided we tell you about the claim promptly and let you take part in the defence.

11. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Hong Kong SAR, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and the courts of Hong Kong have non-exclusive jurisdiction. If you are a consumer, this does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory laws in your country of residence, and you may bring proceedings there.

Before filing anything, please email us. Nearly every dispute we have seen was a billing question that took one reply to fix.

12. The small print

Whole agreement. These Terms, the Privacy Policy and the Refund Policy are the entire agreement between us about the service.
Changes. We may update these Terms; the date at the top changes, and material changes are emailed to account holders. Continuing to use the service means you accept them.
Severability. If a clause is unenforceable, the rest stays in force.
No waiver. Not enforcing a term once doesn't waive it later.
Assignment. You may not transfer your account without our consent; we may transfer these Terms as part of a merger or sale, on notice.

Contact

Email: support@vidsmaller.com

Thanks for using VidSmaller.

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