How to send large videos on Discord without Nitro
You clip a great moment, drag it into a channel, and Discord tells you the file is too big. This guide explains what the limit actually is, why ordinary clips sail past it, and the realistic ways around it.
What Discord’s upload limit actually is
On a free account the limit is 20 MB per file. That number has moved around: it was 8 MB for years, briefly 25 MB, then Discord cut it to 10 MB in late 2024 citing storage costs, which drew a lot of complaints, and later raised it to 20 MB. Paid tiers lift it: Nitro Basic allows 50 MB and full Nitro allows 500 MB.
Server boosts used to raise the limit for everyone in a server. That perk is gone, so a boosted server no longer helps with file size.
Why your clip is so much bigger than the limit
File size is roughly bitrate × duration. A modern screen recorder or console capture writes somewhere between 10 and 50 megabits per second, because it is optimised for capture speed rather than for size. At 20 Mbps, twenty megabytes buys you about eight seconds of video. A one minute clip lands somewhere between 70 MB and 300 MB, which is why almost nothing you record fits without being re-encoded first.
Trimming helps, but only linearly: half the length is half the size. Getting a 150 MB clip under 20 MB by trimming alone means cutting it to about eight seconds.
Four ways to send it anyway
1. Compress the video
Re-encoding at a lower bitrate is the only option that keeps the video playing inline in the channel, which is how people actually watch clips. A minute of 1080p gameplay usually survives the trip to 20 MB looking fine, because capture bitrates are far higher than the footage needs. Long clips of fast, detailed motion suffer more.
You can do this with our video compressor: pick the Discord preset, drop the file, and the result comes back under the limit. It runs inside your browser, so the video is never uploaded to anyone's server and there is no account or watermark.
2. Upload it elsewhere and paste a link
Google Drive, Dropbox, Imgur, or YouTube as an unlisted video all let you share something far larger. The cost is that the clip no longer plays inside Discord: people leave the conversation to watch it, and many simply do not bother. Fine for a long recording, poor for a ten second highlight.
3. Trim before you send
Most clips have a few seconds that matter. Cutting to just those seconds often gets you under the limit on its own, and it is the one option that costs you no quality at all. Worth doing before compressing, not instead of it.
4. Pay for Nitro
If you post large files constantly, Nitro Basic at 50 MB or Nitro at 500 MB removes the problem rather than working around it. For the occasional clip it is hard to justify a subscription.
Which to pick
For a single clip you want people to watch: trim to the good part, then compress to the Discord preset. For a long recording that nobody will watch inline, a Drive link is less work. Nitro only makes sense when large uploads are a habit rather than an occasional annoyance.
Common questions
Will compressing ruin the quality?
Less than people expect. Capture software records at bitrates far above what the footage needs, so the first large reduction mostly discards waste. Quality falls off when the target is very small relative to the length, for example squeezing ten minutes into 20 MB.
Is there a size limit for videos in DMs?
The same per-file limit applies in direct messages as in servers.
Do these tools upload my video somewhere?
Most online compressors do: your file goes to their servers, gets processed, and comes back. Ours does not, because the compression runs in your browser. See our privacy page for what that means in practice.