Compress a video to 50 MB
Fifty megabytes is the first target on this site where you stop fighting the format and start making ordinary choices. It is enough for real 1080p on a short clip and honest 720p on a long one.
Drop your video here
or click to browse — MP4, MKV, MOV, WebM, AVI and more
The compressor above is already set to a 50 MB ceiling. It solves the bitrate from the length of your clip, encodes on your own CPU, weighs what came out, and runs again at a corrected bitrate if the first pass missed 50 MB. Nothing is uploaded.
Where a 50 MB limit comes from
Fifty megabytes turns up as the paid-tier attachment ceiling on chat platforms, as the per-file limit on a lot of internal tools and content management systems, and as the maximum upload size on many learning platforms and job application forms. It is the size a service picks when it wants to allow real video without allowing anyone to upload a film.
It is also a sensible self-imposed ceiling for video you are putting on a web page. Fifty megabytes over a mediocre mobile connection is a long wait, and a visitor who has to wait will not.
What fits in 50 MB
The change in character from the tighter targets is real. At 50 MB a one-minute clip gets close to 7,000 kbps, which is more than 1080p needs on most footage; even five minutes leaves enough for solid 720p. The table below has the exact figures.
| Clip length | Video bitrate budget | Realistic resolution |
|---|---|---|
| 15 seconds | 26,715 kbps | 1080p or original |
| 30 seconds | 13,293 kbps | 1080p or original |
| 1 minute | 6,582 kbps | 1080p or original |
| 2 minutes | 3,227 kbps | 1080p |
| 5 minutes | 1,214 kbps | 720p |
| 10 minutes | 575 kbps | 480p |
| 30 minutes | 159 kbps | 360p |
Work the same arithmetic for any size with the video file size calculator.
At this budget, quality mode beats target mode
Target-size mode exists to hit a ceiling you cannot exceed. If 50 MB is a limit you must respect, use it. But if 50 MB is just "roughly the size I want", the Best compression mode with the quality slider often produces a better-looking file at a similar size, because it targets a fraction of your source bitrate rather than a fixed number — so easy scenes get fewer bits and hard scenes get more.
The rule of thumb: a hard limit means target mode, a preference means the quality slider. If you are not sure which you have, use target mode; it is the one that cannot embarrass you.
When 1080p is worth keeping
Keep 1080p when the detail is the content: screen recordings with text, product close-ups, anything with a face filling the frame, anything someone will watch full-screen on a desktop monitor. Drop to 720p when the video is a supporting element on a page, when it will be watched on a phone, or when the table above tells you 1080p would land below about 2,500 kbps.
Downscaling is not a compromise so much as a reallocation. The bits you save by encoding fewer pixels get spent on describing the pixels that remain more accurately, and past a certain point a sharp 720p file genuinely looks better than a starved 1080p one on the same screen.
Questions about the 50 MB target
Can I get 10 minutes of 1080p into 50 MB?
Not well. Ten minutes at 50 MB works out to 575 kbps for video, which is a 480p budget. For ten minutes of watchable 1080p you want somewhere north of 300 MB. Either accept 480p, trim the clip, or raise the ceiling.
Is there a file size limit on this compressor?
Only your device. The whole file is held in browser memory while it is encoded, so a machine with plenty of RAM will handle several gigabytes and a phone will not. There is no server-side cap, because there is no server.
Should I use MP4 or WebM for a 50 MB target?
MP4 unless the file is going on a web page you control. WebM here really is VP9, so it will hold a slightly better picture inside the same 50 MB, but it takes considerably longer to encode and a fair number of devices will not open it. For a file you are sending to a person, MP4 with H.264 remains the answer.
Other size targets
- Compress to 5 MB The tightest ceiling here. Past about three minutes it stops being possible at all.
- Compress to 8 MB The classic chat and forum attachment wall. Tight enough that duration decides everything.
- Compress to 10 MB The default cap on a huge number of upload forms — and 25% more room than 8 MB.
- Compress to 16 MB The WhatsApp video ceiling — and the one target where the platform re-encodes after you.
- Compress to 20 MB The default in helpdesks, CMS media libraries and upload widgets. Rarely announced.
- Compress to 25 MB The Gmail attachment limit — with the base64 overhead that makes 25 MB less than it looks.
- Compress to 100 MB Generous enough for real 1080p. Also GitHub's hard per-file push limit.
- Compress to 200 MB Big enough that the real question is your viewer's patience, not the platform's limit.
- Compress to 500 MB Discord Nitro's per-file ceiling, and the point where the browser becomes the bottleneck.
Compressing for a specific platform instead? Discord, WhatsApp and email each have their own page.
Or start from the file you have. Whether 50 MB is a stretch or a formality depends on what is already inside the container: MP4 , MOV , MKV , WebM , AVI , WMV , FLV , M4V and MTS / M2TS .