Compress any video to 10MB for forms, work email and chat

How to compress video to 10MB

This 10MB video compressor opens with the target size box already set to 10. Add your video, hit Squish, and the file you download is an MP4 below 10MB. Your own device does the encoding, so a 2GB source file works as well as a 20MB one and you never wait on an upload bar. Look at the table below first, though. The length of your clip decides how sharp a 10MB version can be, far more than the resolution you started with.

How long can a 10MB video be?

About 20 seconds at 1080p, 45 seconds at 720p and a minute and a half at 540p. Past 2 minutes it still fits, but the picture turns soft.

The arithmetic is simple. 10MB is about 84 megabits. I aim roughly 7% under that, to leave a safety margin and room for the MP4 container, so about 78 megabits remain for the whole clip, video and audio together. A 30-second clip gets 2.6 Mbps. A 2-minute clip gets 0.65 Mbps. Every second you add takes bits away from every frame.

I generated these rows with this tool's own planner, using two common sources: an iPhone HEVC recording at about 10 Mbps and an H.264 gameplay capture at about 25 Mbps. Expect your own clip to come out a rung above or below these. Screen recordings and talking-head videos usually look better than the table suggests, because little in the frame changes from one second to the next. If the result is going to look rough, a warning shows up before you download it.

Where you'll run into a 10MB limit

Most big apps moved past 10MB a while ago. The limit still turns up in the places that don't announce it until your upload fails:

• Online forms. Typeform's file upload question accepts files up to 10MB. In Google Forms, the person who made the form picks a per-file cap anywhere from 1MB to 10GB, and 10MB is one of the options in that menu. Job applications, school assignments and contest entries often sit behind forms like these.
• Work email. Exchange Server 2013, 2016 and 2019 ship with a 10MB limit on messages sent and received across the organization. If your company runs its own mail server and nobody changed that setting, a 15MB attachment bounces. The email video compressor has a Work email preset for exactly this, next to the presets for Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo and for iCloud Mail.
• Websites and older apps. Help desks, forums, CMS media libraries and support portals often set 10MB as a round number. When an upload box says "max 10MB" and gives no other detail, this page is the shortcut.

Discord was on the list until recently. Its free limit sat at 10MB from September 2024 and went up to 20MB in August 2026, so 10MB now wastes half the budget you're allowed there. The Discord video compressor starts at 20MB instead.

What 10MB gets you over 8MB

Two extra megabytes sounds small. On a short clip, 25% more bitrate is often the difference between one rung of resolution and the next, or between keeping 60fps and dropping to 30. Here is the same planner at both sizes:

So if the place you're uploading to allows 10MB, don't aim for 8MB out of habit. Use the 8MB video compressor only when something states 8MB outright.

What the tool changes to fit 10MB

To fit 10MB, the tool lowers the resolution, and for 60fps footage the frame rate, before it lets the picture break into blocks. Audio keeps 128 kbps on clips up to about 90 seconds at this size. If the first encode still lands over 10MB, it runs another pass, up to three. The logic is the same at every size, and I walk through each step on the 8MB compressor page. Whatever you start from, MOV, MKV, WebM or AVI, you get an H.264 MP4 that plays on any phone and in any browser.

Why your 10MB file shows a different size

Computers disagree on what "MB" means. This tool counts 1 MB as 1,048,576 bytes, so 10MB is 10,485,760 bytes, and Windows counts the same way. macOS Finder and many websites count 1 MB as 1,000,000 bytes, which makes the same file look bigger.

That's why the first pass aims at about 9.7 million bytes. Windows shows that file as roughly 9.3MB, Finder shows 9.7MB, and it clears a 10MB limit under either definition. If a form still rejects it, type 9 into the target box and try again.

Getting a better-looking 10MB video

• Trim first. Cutting a 1-minute iPhone clip down to 45 seconds moves it from 540p to 720p. This tool doesn't trim, so shorten the clip in your phone's Photos or Gallery editor, then compress the shorter version.
• Calm footage goes further. A slide deck, a screen recording or someone talking to the camera holds up at 1 Mbps. Fast gameplay, water, crowds and shaky handheld shots don't, because every pixel that changes costs bits.
• Start from the original file. A clip that a chat app already squeezed loses more detail with each re-encode. I explain why in how many times you can re-compress a video.

Need a different size?

You can type any number into the target box on this page. If you'd rather pick a quality level with no fixed size, or use presets like 16MB for WhatsApp, go to the free video compressor on the home page. For email attachments, the email video compressor covers each provider's limit.

Frequently asked questions