Discord's upload limit right now
At the time of writing, free Discord accounts can upload files of up to 20 MB each, and Nitro subscribers get considerably more.
You'll still see 10 MB quoted in plenty of places. Discord cut the free limit from 25 MB to 10 MB in 2024 and raised it to 20 MB in August 2026, so older guides, presets and search results lag behind. If a number ever looks wrong, Discord's help center has the current one.
Aim slightly under the limit rather than exactly at it. Apps don't all count megabytes the same way, some use 1,000,000 bytes, others 1,048,576, and 19 MB leaves room for the difference. If an upload is ever refused, compress again at 18.
What 19 MB buys you
The size budget is shared by picture and sound across the whole clip, so length decides almost everything. With the audio at 128 kbps, this is roughly what's left for the video:
- 30 seconds, about 5 Mbps: plenty for 1080p at 30 fps.
- 1 minute, about 2.4 Mbps: 1080p for calm footage, 720p for gameplay.
- 2 minutes, about 1.1 Mbps: 720p, or 480p if there's lots of motion.
- 3 minutes or more, under 0.75 Mbps: 480p, or trim it down.
Halve those figures if you're working to 10 MB. And when your settings would starve the picture, you'll see a warning before encoding begins, along with a suggested resolution that will look cleaner.
Squeezing gameplay clips
Game footage is the hardest thing to compress: fast motion and fine detail change every frame. Capture tools also record at very high bitrates, often tens of megabits per second, so even a short clip blows past 20 MB. That's normal, and it leaves lots of room to shrink. A few habits make a big difference:
- Trim first. Cutting a 90-second capture down to the 20 seconds that matter does more for quality than any setting. Use the video trimmer, then come back.
- Drop to 30 fps. Clips recorded above 30 fps get a Frame rate option. Half the frames means each one gets twice the data.
- Lower the resolution. 720p looks sharp in a chat window and on phones.
- Mind the audio. Keep 128 kbps for game sound and music; Lower (64 kbps) is fine for voice-only clips.
Stick with H.264. H.265 and AV1 fit more quality into the same size, but they may not play inline for everyone in the channel.
Short loops and long videos
For a silent reaction of a few seconds, a GIF can be handier, since Discord plays GIFs automatically by default while videos wait for a click. Make one with MP4 to GIF.
At the other end, anything longer than a few minutes gets thin at 19 MB. Upload the full-quality video elsewhere and share the link, or work out what's realistic first with the bitrate calculator.