Discord file size limit: 20 MB free, and how to send a bigger video

If you drop a video into Discord and get “Your files are too powerful”, the file is over your upload limit. For most people that limit is now 20 MB. That sounds generous until you remember that a phone records 1080p video at roughly 40–130 MB per minute — so even a 20-second clip straight off the camera can be too big.

Here is what the limits are, what actually fits in them, and the four ways round them.

Discord upload limits in 2026

Account	Upload limit per file
Free	20 MB
Nitro Basic	50 MB
Nitro	500 MB

The limit is per file, and it is the same in servers and direct messages. It has moved a lot: free accounts could upload 25 MB until 2024, when Discord cut the limit to 10 MB, and on August 13, 2026 it was raised to 20 MB. A lot of guides — and a lot of “Discord compressor” tools — still assume 10 MB, which throws away half the quality you are allowed. If Discord’s error message names a different number, trust the message: it reflects your account.

Why Discord rejects some files under 20 MB

Two things catch people out:

• Megabytes are not all the same size. Windows counts a megabyte as 1,048,576 bytes; macOS and most phones count 1,000,000. A file listed as 19.9 MB on one device can be over the limit by another’s count. Leave a little room.
• Phone uploads are measured before compression. Since the August 2026 change, Discord’s mobile apps check the size of the original file before shrinking it, the way the desktop app always did. A long phone video that used to be squeezed down and accepted is now rejected at its full size. Compress it yourself first and you control how it looks.

What fits in 20 MB

Twenty megabytes is about 168 megabits, and that budget has to cover every second of picture and sound. The longer the clip, the thinner it is spread. This is what our compressor chooses for a typical 1080p, 30 fps phone video at each length:

The pattern: up to a minute looks sharp, up to two minutes looks good on a phone, beyond three minutes looks soft. Lowering the resolution is deliberate — at a tight budget, a clean 540p picture looks better on a phone than a blocky 1080p one.

Option 1: compress it to just under 20 MB

For anything up to two or three minutes, compressing is the quickest fix. Our Discord compressor is already set to 19 MB — a little under the limit, which leaves room for the megabyte mismatch above.

Discord Video CompressorFit any video under Discord's 20 MB free upload limit — no Nitro, no upload, sound kept.Compress for Discord →

Most “compress to a size” tools divide the size by the length and hope, which often produces a file a few percent over the target. This one sets aside room for the sound and the file’s own structure first, then weighs the finished file and re-encodes if it came out over. It runs in your browser, so the video is never uploaded — which also makes it faster than an online converter for a large file.

Option 2: cut it down to the part that matters

Halving a clip’s length roughly doubles the quality you can afford at the same size. If only part of a recording is worth sharing, trim it first: a 30-second highlight fits in 20 MB at full 1080p, while the whole five-minute recording would be squeezed down to 270p.

Cut & Merge VideosTrim start and end points of a video, or combine multiple video clips into a single seamless output file.Trim the video →

Option 3: split it into several pieces

If you need the whole video and it is too long to look good in one file, split it into parts and send them one after another. Each piece gets the full 20 MB, so a four-minute video split into four one-minute parts stays at 720p instead of dropping to a soft 360p in a single file.

Split VideoCut a video into equal parts, fixed-length clips, or at the exact times you choose. Download each piece or a ZIP.Split the video →

Split first, then compress each part to 19 MB.

Option 4: use Nitro’s limit, or send a link

With Nitro Basic, the limit is 50 MB — enough for a minute at full 1080p or five minutes at 540p. Compressing to just under 50 MB keeps as much quality as possible:

Compress Video to 50 MBGet a video under 50 MB for Discord Nitro Basic, web forms and course platforms, with the sharpest picture that fits.Compress to 50 MB →

For anything longer — a full gaming session or a recorded call — upload the video to a cloud storage or video service and paste the link instead. Discord shows a preview for many video links, and a link has no size limit.

Which option should you pick?

• Under two minutes: compress it to 19 MB. It will look fine.
• Longer, and only part matters: trim it, then compress.
• Longer, and you need all of it: split it into one- or two-minute parts.
• Much longer than that: use Nitro’s 50 MB limit or send a link.