Preset · 16 MB target
Compress a video for WhatsApp
WhatsApp limits videos sent as media to 16 MB in many regions — and its own automatic compression can leave clips looking smeared. Compress here first, on your own device, and send a file WhatsApp won't mangle. No upload, no watermark.
How much video fits in 16 MB?
There's no single answer, because it's a trade between length and picture quality: the longer the clip, the less detail fits in the same 16 MB. The table below is what this compressor actually produces from a typical phone recording — full HD, 30 frames a second, with sound.
| Video length | What 16 MB gives you |
|---|---|
| 30 seconds | Full HD — hard to tell from the original |
| 1 minute | Nearly full HD, still sharp |
| 3 minutes | Reduced size — looks fine on a phone |
| 10 minutes | Small picture; watchable, blocky on a big screen |
| 20 minutes | Heavily reduced, and the frame rate drops to keep it watchable |
Past about 22 minutes, 16 MB stops being enough for a picture worth watching. Rather than hand you mush, the compressor offers to keep the opening stretch that fits — or send the video as a document in WhatsApp, which allows up to 2 GB with no recompression. For an exact figure before you start, the bitrate calculator does the sum for your own video's length and resolution.
Why compress before sending on WhatsApp
When you send a video as media, WhatsApp re-compresses it aggressively on your phone with one-size-fits-all settings — that's where the blur comes from. If your video is already under the size limit and encoded efficiently, WhatsApp has far less reason to crush it. Compressing here first means you decide the trade-off, with a proper two-step process: work out exactly how much to compress to fit 16 MB, do it, check the size, and compress again automatically if needed.
The output is a standard MP4 — exactly what WhatsApp, iPhones and Androids prefer. A minute of video fits in 16 MB at very watchable quality; several minutes will step down to a lower resolution that still looks intentional rather than mangled. For longer videos, you can also send the compressed file as a document in WhatsApp — documents aren't re-compressed at all and have a much higher size limit (2 GB).
Everything runs in your browser. Family videos, kids' clips, medical consultations — nothing is uploaded to anyone's server, including ours. There isn't one.