Get under the upload limit without the quality cliff
The everyday reason to compress a video is a wall: a file that won’t attach to an email, a clip that exceeds a platform’s upload cap, a screen recording too chunky to share in a message. The crude fix — drop the quality until it fits — throws away more than it needs to. This tool gives you the two dials that actually matter, separately, so you can shrink the file with the least visible cost. And it runs locally: a WebAssembly build of ffmpeg re-encodes the video in your browser, so nothing is uploaded to a server — which matters for client work, unreleased content, or anything you’d rather not hand to a free website.
Resolution first, then quality
When a file is far too big, reach for resolution before quality. Phones shoot in 4K by default, but almost every social platform displays video at 1080p or below — so downscaling a 4K clip to 1080p removes three-quarters of the pixels for no visible loss in the feed. The tool only ever downscales, never upscales, and works from the shorter side so it handles vertical Reels and TikToks correctly, not just landscape. Once the resolution is sensible, the qualitydial fine-tunes the rest: “Balanced” is the sweet spot for most footage, “Smaller file” leans harder on compression for when size is the priority, and “Higher quality” preserves detail in fast or grainy footage at the cost of a larger file. The before-and-after size is shown so you can feel each choice rather than guess.
Compress the video, or turn it into a GIF?
These two jobs get confused constantly, so the rule is worth stating plainly: if you want a real, smaller video — with sound, good quality, posted to a feed — compress it here. If you want a short, silent animation that auto-loops in a place that won’t play video inline, you want the video to GIF converter instead. Counterintuitively, a GIF is almost always largerthan the same clip as a compressed video, because the GIF format is ancient and inefficient — so “make it smaller” almost never means “make it a GIF.” And if what you actually need is the right pixel dimensions for a thumbnail or cover, that’s the job of the image resizer.
What “in your browser” costs you
Doing this locally is a real privacy win, but it has one honest trade-off: speed. A server with dedicated video hardware compresses faster than a browser tab can. A short clip is a matter of seconds; a long, high-resolution one can take a few minutes, and very large files can strain the engine’s memory. The encoder is set to a fast preset to keep this reasonable, and the progress bar tells you it’s working — but for a long recording, trimming to the part you need (or starting from a lower resolution) is the difference between seconds and minutes. For most social clips — a few seconds to a couple of minutes — it’s quick enough that the never-uploaded part is pure upside.
Compress a video for Discord, email, and social
Most “compress my video” searches are really “get under thisupload limit.” The common ceilings to aim below:
Compress video for Discord
Discord caps uploads at 10 MBon a free account (25 MB with Nitro Basic, 500 MB with Nitro). Drop the resolution to 720p and nudge quality down until the projected size clears the cap — usually painless for a short clip.
Compress video for email & WhatsApp
Most email providers reject attachments over 25 MB, and WhatsApp caps video around 16 MB. For these, trimming the clip shorter is the biggest single lever, then a resolution drop.
Compress video for Instagram & TikTok
The feeds re-encode whatever you upload, so the goal here isn’t a hard size cap but a clean source: a smaller, well-compressed file uploads faster and gives the platform less to degrade. 1080p at a sensible quality is the sweet spot.
Frequently asked questions
How does compressing a video make it smaller?
It re-encodes the video with a more efficient setting, throwing away detail you mostly can't see. The main dial is quality (technically the H.264 “constant rate factor”): a higher compression level spends fewer bits per frame, which shrinks the file at the cost of some fine detail in busy, fast-moving footage. The second dial is resolution: a 4K phone clip downscaled to 1080p has a quarter of the pixels, so it's dramatically smaller before quality even enters the picture. Most social platforms display video at 1080p or less anyway, so downscaling a 4K source usually costs you nothing visible.
Is my video uploaded anywhere?
No. Like the rest of these tools, it runs a WebAssembly build of ffmpeg directly in your browser — the file is read from your device, re-encoded locally, and handed back to download. Nothing is sent to a server, there's no account, and the video never leaves your machine. The only network request is the one-time fetch of the ~25MB conversion engine the first time you compress something.
Why is compression slow?
Because video encoding is genuinely heavy work, and doing it in the browser (rather than on a server with a dedicated video chip) is slower than a native app. A short clip compresses in seconds to a minute; a long, high-resolution one can take several minutes. The tool uses a fast encoder preset to keep this tolerable, and shows a progress bar so you know it's working. If a long video is taking too long or runs out of memory, compress a shorter section or start from a lower resolution.
What's the difference between this and making a GIF?
They solve opposite problems. A GIF makes a short, silent, auto-looping animation — and is usually much larger than the equivalent video. This compressor keeps the file a real video: it has sound, it stays high quality, and it gets smaller, not bigger. If your goal is to fit a clip under an upload limit or email it, compress it. If you specifically need a silent looping animation for a chat reply or a docs page, make a GIF instead.
Will the compressed video still play everywhere?
Yes. The output is a standard H.264 MP4 with AAC audio — the most widely supported combination there is, accepted by every social platform, messaging app, and browser. It's also encoded with “faststart,” which lets it begin playing before it's fully downloaded, the way web video should. You can re-upload it anywhere you'd post a normal video.
It says my video didn't get smaller — why?
Some videos are already compressed efficiently — exports from editing apps, clips that have been through a platform once, or anything already at a low resolution. Re-encoding those at a high quality setting can produce a file the same size or slightly larger, because there's little redundancy left to remove. When that happens, drop to a more aggressive quality level or a lower resolution, which forces a real size reduction. If a clip is already small and looks fine, it may simply not need compressing.