Shrink any video under 8MB: MP4, MOV, MKV and more

How to compress video to 8MB

Need a video file under an 8MB upload limit? This compressor starts with an 8MB target. Drop in a supported video, click Squish, and download an MP4 designed to stay below the limit. The tool adjusts resolution, frame rate and audio to fit the target. How good the result looks depends mainly on the clip's length, motion and original quality.

How long can an 8MB video be?

About 20 seconds at 1080p, 30 seconds at 720p and a minute at 540p. Past 90 seconds it still fits, but it looks rough.

It comes down to arithmetic. 8MB is 67 megabits. I aim about 7% under that, as a safety margin plus room for the MP4 container, which leaves roughly 62 megabits to spread across the whole clip, video and audio together. A 30-second clip gets about 2 Mbps. A 2-minute clip gets about 0.5 Mbps. That's why an 8MB video can't be long and sharp at the same time.

These rows come from this tool's own planner, run on two typical sources: an iPhone HEVC recording at about 10 Mbps, and an H.264 gameplay capture at about 25 Mbps. Your clip may land one step higher or lower. A video that has already been compressed once, like a clip saved from a chat app, often keeps more resolution than the table shows. When the budget gets thin enough that the result will look poor, the tool tells you before you download. To check a different length or resolution before you compress, try the video file size calculator.

Is 8MB still Discord's upload limit?

No. 8MB was Discord's free upload limit for years, which is why so many people still search for it. Discord raised it to 25MB in 2023, cut it to 10MB in September 2024, and raised it again to 20MB in August 2026. Nitro Basic allows 50MB and full Nitro allows 500MB.

So if you're compressing for Discord on a free account, 8MB throws away quality you're allowed to keep. 20MB gives the encoder two and a half times the budget:

For that, use the Discord video compressor. It starts at 20MB and has one-tap presets for Nitro Basic and Nitro. Stay with 8MB when something states 8MB outright, such as an upload form, a forum, a bot or an older app, or when you need the file as small as it can reasonably get.

How 8MB compression keeps a video watchable

Any encoder can hit a size if you tell it to spend 1 Mbps. Keeping the video watchable at that size is harder, and it's where I spent most of the work on this tool.

• It picks the resolution to match the budget. 1 Mbps spread over 1080p looks blocky, while the same 1 Mbps at 540p looks clean. So instead of keeping the original resolution and letting the encoder smear it, the tool steps down 1080p → 720p → 540p → 480p → 360p until every pixel gets enough bits. It judges your clip against itself, so a video that was already compressed isn't downscaled harder than it needs.
• It drops 60fps to 30fps before going below 720p. For gameplay and screen recordings, half the frames at a sharper resolution looks better than every frame at a blurry one.
• It keeps the audio clear. Audio stays at 128 kbps stereo for clips up to about a minute, then steps down (96, 64, 48, 32 kbps) as the clip gets longer. Audio is only removed when the budget can't even carry 16 kbps.
• It checks the result. The first pass aims under 8MB. If an encode still lands over, the tool re-encodes it smaller, up to three passes. If it still can't get there, it says so instead of handing you a file that won't upload.

The output is always an H.264 MP4. That plays inline on Discord, on iPhone and Android, and in every browser, whatever format you started with (MOV, MKV, WebM, AVI).

Why your 8MB file shows a different size on another computer

"MB" means two different things depending on who's counting. This tool counts 1 MB as 1,048,576 bytes, so 8MB is 8,388,608 bytes. Windows Explorer counts the same way. macOS Finder counts 1 MB as 1,000,000 bytes, so the same file reads bigger on a Mac: a video Windows lists as 7.6MB shows up as 8.0MB in Finder.

The first pass already aims at roughly 7.9 million bytes, which clears both definitions. If a site still rejects a file you expected to be under 8MB, type 7 into the target box instead. That costs about an eighth of the bitrate and leaves no doubt.

Getting a better-looking 8MB video

• Trim before you compress. Length is the biggest factor in the table above: cutting a 60-second clip to 30 seconds takes it from 540p to 720p. This tool doesn't trim, so cut the clip in your phone's Photos or Gallery editor first, then compress the shorter version.
• Expect fast motion to cost more. A talking head or a screen recording holds up at 1 Mbps. Fast gameplay, confetti, water or a shaky handheld shot doesn't, because every changing pixel costs bits.
• Compress the original, not a copy. A clip already squeezed by a chat app loses more detail each time it's re-encoded. See how many times you can re-compress a video before it shows.

Don't need exactly 8MB?

This page does one job, so it only has the target size box. You can type any other number into it, but if you'd rather pick a quality level with no fixed size, or use one-tap presets like 16MB for WhatsApp, use the free video compressor on the home page. If the limit is 10MB, the 10MB video compressor keeps noticeably more detail. For an email attachment, the email video compressor has a preset for each provider.

Frequently asked questions