Free Video Compressor

How this compressor is different

Every other online video compressor works the same way: you upload the file to their server, wait for the transfer, wait for the queue, and download the result — and because bandwidth and CPU time cost them money, the free tier stops at 500 MB or 1 GB and everything larger needs a subscription. This one never uploads anything. The video is decoded, resized and re-encoded by your own browser, using the same hardware video encoder your computer or phone uses to record video in the first place. There is no server in the loop, so there is no queue, no file size cap, no credits and nothing to sign in to. A 3 GB recording compresses at the same price as a 3 MB clip: free.

It is also faster than it sounds. The encoder is the chip in your device, not a WebAssembly build of a software encoder, so a 1080p file typically compresses at two to five times its playback speed on a recent laptop. And because the data stays on your machine, you can compress a meeting recording, a medical scan or a private family video without the file ever passing through a third party. You can verify this yourself: open your browser's network panel while a compression runs — there is no request carrying your video.

How to compress a video

Drop a video onto the page or click Choose file. The compressor reads the file's dimensions, frame rate, duration and current bitrate in a second or two — nothing is decoded yet — and shows a preview frame. Then pick how small you want it. The four presets shrink the file by a percentage of its current size; the size box and slider set an exact target such as 25 MB for an email attachment; the buttons underneath jump straight to the upload limits of Discord, WhatsApp, email and Telegram. The line under the Compress button always shows the estimated output size and the resolution it will be encoded at, so you know what you are getting before you start.

Press Compress. A progress bar shows the percentage, elapsed time and the estimated time remaining; you can stop at any point. When it finishes you see the original and the new size side by side, a player with the compressed file so you can check it plays and looks right, and a Download button. The result can also be handed straight to Trim Video ↗, Remove Audio ↗ or Video to MP3 ↗ without saving it first.

Advanced settings, and when to use them

The Advanced tab exposes what the presets decide for you. "By quality" replaces the target size with three quality levels: High keeps the picture close to the source, Balanced is what most people want, Small pushes hard for the smallest file that still looks fine on a phone. Resolution caps the short side of the frame — 4K footage sent to a group chat gains nothing above 1080p, and dropping to 720p halves the size again with no visible loss on a phone screen. Frame rate caps 60 fps recordings at 30, which cuts the bitrate needed by roughly a third for anything that is not a game capture. The codec menu offers H.264 (plays everywhere), H.265/HEVC (about 35% smaller at the same quality, plays on anything from the last eight years), VP9 and AV1 (WebM output, smallest files, best for the web); the menu only lists the codecs your browser can actually encode with hardware.

Audio is copied unchanged by default, because the sound track is rarely where the size is. If it is — a long voice recording with little motion, say — re-encode it to 128 or 64 kbps, or remove it entirely. When a target size is too small for the chosen resolution, the compressor lowers the resolution one step at a time until the bitrate is enough to avoid blocky artefacts, and tells you it did so in the estimate line. It will also warn you when compressing is pointless: if the source is already encoded at a lower bitrate than the target, re-encoding would only add generation loss.

What compression actually does to a video

A video file's size is almost entirely bitrate × duration. Bitrate is how many bits the encoder is allowed to spend per second of video; the encoder spends them on describing the difference between one frame and the next, and when it runs out, it spends less on detail — first in flat areas and fast motion where you will not notice, then, at very low bitrates, in visible blocks and smearing. Compressing a video therefore means choosing a lower bitrate and letting a good encoder decide where to save. Resolution and frame rate set how many pixels per second there are to describe; halving either roughly halves the bits needed for the same visual quality, which is why the compressor reaches for them when a target is very small.

This tool measures quality in bits per pixel per frame rather than raw bitrate, so the same setting gives the same look on a 480p clip and a 4K one. The encoder writes a keyframe every two seconds — a full picture the player can start from — so the result seeks quickly in any player and streams well when uploaded. Metadata such as the recording date and the phone's rotation flag are carried over, so a portrait video stays portrait.

Formats and limits

Input: MP4, M4V, MOV, WebM and MKV, with H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP8, VP9 and AV1 video, are opened and decoded natively and take the fast hardware path. Output is MP4 (H.264 or H.265) or WebM (VP9 or AV1). There is no file size or duration limit: the input is read in place from your disk and the output is streamed to disk as it is encoded, so memory use does not grow with the file. Older containers — AVI, WMV, FLV, MPEG, VOB, 3GP — can be handled by an optional software compatibility engine; it is slower and loads about 30 MB the first time, and whether it is enabled depends on this site's configuration. Everything runs in current Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox on desktop and Android; on iPhone the hardware encoder is available in Safari 17 and later.

Frequently asked questions