Compress video to send by email
Attachments grow when they are encoded, so a 24 MB video can bounce even though your provider allows 25. This tool aims at 18 MB — the size that actually arrives — and compresses without uploading the file anywhere.
Your video is never uploaded: it is compressed inside your own browser.
Why compress it here
How to get a video ready to attach
Pick the video you meant to attach — the 18 MB target is already set.
Check the resulting resolution and press 'Compress'.
Download the result.
Attach it to your email as usual; it should no longer bounce.
The number your provider advertises is not the one you can attach
This is the most common confusion with attachments, and it wastes a fair amount of time: Gmail says 25 MB, you prepare a 24 MB video, and the send fails. It is neither their bug nor yours. Email cannot carry raw binary files, so it encodes them as base64, a format made purely of text. That conversion inflates the size by around 33%.
By that arithmetic, the advertised 25 MB corresponds to about 18 MB of real file (25 ÷ 1.33). That is why this page targets 18 rather than 25: it is the size that actually reaches the other end.
| Your file | What travels (base64) | Passes the 25 MB check? |
|---|---|---|
| 10 MB | ~13 MB | Yes |
| 18 MB | ~24 MB | Yes, just about |
| 20 MB | ~27 MB | No |
| 25 MB | ~33 MB | No |
When to compress and when to send a link
Compressing makes sense when the video is short and you want the other person to watch it with no intermediate steps: it opens from the message itself, with no cloud account and no permissions. A one- or two-minute clip fits into 18 MB at a perfectly respectable quality.
When the video is long, the arithmetic stops working: spreading 18 MB across half an hour of footage forces the resolution so low that the result is useless. A Google Drive or WeTransfer link is better there. Gmail, in fact, does exactly that on its own if you try to attach something too big.
If your mailbox has a different limit
Corporate mailboxes often have tighter caps than public ones, sometimes 10 MB. The tool accepts a custom size: type the megabytes you need into the field and it works the rest out on your video. And if the destination is something else, each one has its own page: WhatsApp and Discord.
Frequently asked questions
Why 18 MB if Gmail allows 25?
Because Gmail's 25 MB is measured on the encoded message, not on your file. When you attach something it is converted to base64, a text-only format that takes roughly 33% more space. A 25 MB video travels as about 33 MB and its own limit rejects it. Dividing 25 by 1.33 gives that ~18 MB of real file.
Does this work for Outlook and other providers?
Yes. Outlook and Yahoo also sit around 20–25 MB advertised and apply the same encoding, so 18 MB is a safe size in practice. If yours is a corporate mailbox, your administrator may have set a lower cap: in that case type the number you need into the custom MB field.
What happens if I send too large a video through Gmail?
Gmail does not simply refuse it: it uploads the file to Google Drive and sends a link instead of an attachment. That works, but the recipient needs a connection and permissions to view it, and the video sits in your Drive using up space. If you want the file to travel inside the message, it has to be compressed.
Is it better to compress or to send a link?
It depends on the video. For something short that you want the other person to watch with no extra steps, compressing to 18 MB is friendlier. For a long recording — an hour-long talk, a 4K video — compressing would leave it unrecognisable: a Drive or WeTransfer link makes far more sense there.
Is the video uploaded somewhere to compress it?
No. The compression engine runs inside your browser, so the file never leaves your machine. It is the exact opposite of the online compressors that ask you to upload the video first.