How to Compress a Video for Email (Under 25 MB)
Gmail and Yahoo cap attachments at 25 MB, Outlook at 20 MB. Shrink a video to fit in one step — the tool picks the bitrate and size for you. Free, no upload.
3 min read ·
Most email services limit attachments to 20–25 MB in total. To make a video fit, open Compress Video to Size, add the video, pick 25 MB (Gmail, Yahoo) or 20 MB (Outlook), and press Compress to 25 MB. The tool works out the right quality and resolution so the file lands just under the limit. Then attach it as usual.
Email attachment limits
| Service | Limit per email |
|---|---|
| Gmail | 25 MB |
| Yahoo Mail | 25 MB |
| Outlook / Microsoft 365 | 20 MB (often set by your organisation) |
| iCloud Mail | 20 MB (larger with Mail Drop) |
The limit is for the whole email, and attachments grow by about a third when sent, so aim a little under. Choosing 20 MB is the safe choice when you're not sure.
Compress step by step
- Open Compress Video to Size.
- Add the video — MP4, MOV, WebM or MKV.
- Under Get it under, choose 20 MB or 25 MB, or type any size.
- Check the Plan — it shows the resolution and bitrate it will use.
- Press Compress to … MB and wait. It encodes twice ("two-pass") to hit the size precisely, so allow two to four times the video's length.
- Download the result and attach it.
How much video fits in 25 MB?
Roughly — the tool calculates it exactly:
| Length | Likely result |
|---|---|
| 30 seconds | Full HD, looks great |
| 1–2 minutes | 540p–720p, good |
| 3–5 minutes | 360p–540p, fine on a phone |
| 10 minutes | Low resolution, visibly soft |
For long videos, cut first: the Video Cutter can trim away everything but the part your recipient needs, and that helps quality far more than any setting.
When a link is better
For long or high-quality videos, a sharing link is better than an attachment:
- Gmail offers to send files over 25 MB as a Google Drive link automatically.
- Outlook can attach large files as OneDrive links.
- iCloud Mail Drop sends files up to 5 GB as a link from the Mail app on Apple devices.
Links keep full quality, but the recipient needs to download from the cloud — and some workplaces block personal cloud links.
Check the recipient's limit too
Your email service is only half the story: the receiving server has a limit as well. Many company mail systems accept 10–20 MB at most, and some strip video attachments altogether. If you're sending to a workplace and aren't sure, aim for 10 MB, or send a link instead.
Only need the sound?
For a recorded talk, interview or voice message, the audio alone is tiny: Extract Audio saves it as an MP3 — about 1 MB a minute.
Privacy
Compression happens in your browser with ffmpeg (WebAssembly). The video never leaves your device until you attach it yourself, and there's no watermark.
Frequently asked questions
Why does the result say 24.9 MB and not exactly 25?
It's aimed just under the limit on purpose, counting a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes — the strict way limits are counted — so the file is accepted either way.
Will the video look bad?
Short videos look excellent at 25 MB. Quality drops as length goes up, because the same space has to cover more seconds. Trim when you can.
What if I just want it smaller, with no exact target?
Use Compress Video and choose a strength and resolution instead.