How do I send a video on Discord that’s over the limit?
Discord’s free upload cap is 10 MB (8 MB on some older servers). The fix: compress the clip to just under the cap — the tool below reads your video’s length, computes the exact bitrate that fits, and re-encodes in your browser without uploading anything. Trim first if quality matters; Nitro raises the cap if you have it.
- Trim to the moment. A 10 MB budget over 3 minutes looks rough; over 20 seconds it looks great. Cut to the part that matters with the video trimmer — instant mode does it losslessly for MP4.
- Compress to 10 MB. Drop the clip on Compress Video to 10 MB. It budgets ~7% under the cap for container overhead, so the file actually sends instead of failing at 10.1 MB.
- Post it. Drag the compressed MP4 into the Discord chat. H.264 MP4 previews inline on every platform Discord runs on.
A phone clip compresses in well under a minute. Game captures (high motion) give up more sharpness than screen recordings — trimming buys back most of it.
What are Discord’s actual limits?
Free accounts upload up to 10 MB. Nitro Basic and Nitro raise the ceiling substantially, and some servers with boosts inherit higher limits. The 8 MB number still floats around from the years it was the free cap — a few tools and communities still standardize on it, which is why QuietPix keeps an 8 MB page too.
GIFs count too
Emoji (256 KB) and stickers have their own caps, and big GIFs hit the same 10 MB wall as videos. The GIF compressor pages walk a quality ladder to those exact ceilings — same idea, GIF-shaped.
Tools for this job
Frequently asked questions
Why does my 9.8 MB video fail to upload?
Some clients measure megabytes differently (10,000,000 bytes vs 10,485,760). The compressor undershoots the ceiling with margin, so its output sends under either definition.
Will compression ruin game clips?
High-motion footage costs the most bits, so long game clips soften first. Trim to the play itself — 15–30 seconds at 10 MB keeps quality very watchable.
Is my video uploaded to compress it?
No. FFmpeg runs in your browser via WebAssembly; the original never leaves your device — only the compressed result goes to Discord when you post it.