Video bitrate calculator

For 1080p, YouTube recommends 8 Mbps at 24, 25 or 30 fps and 12 Mbps at 48, 50 or 60 fps; for 720p, 5 Mbps and 7.5 Mbps. These are YouTube's recommended upload bitrates for SDR video (its help page, read on November 7, 2026):

For sound, YouTube recommends AAC-LC (or Opus) at 48 kHz: 128 kbps for mono, 384 kbps for stereo and 512 kbps for 5.1, in an MP4 with H.264 video. A vertical video counts by its shorter side, so 1080 × 1920 is 1080p. For every export setting in one place, read the best video export settings.

File size (bytes) = (video bitrate + audio bitrate) × seconds ÷ 8. Bitrates are in bits a second and there are 8 bits in a byte. A minute of 1080p at 8 Mbps with 384 kbps sound is (8,000,000 + 384,000) × 60 ÷ 8 = 62.9 MB. The file is a little bigger again for the container's headers and index.

The other way round, the bitrate that fits a size is size × 8 ÷ seconds, less the audio. Here's what common bitrates come to:

Sizes here are decimal: 1 MB is 1,000,000 bytes, as phones, macOS and most apps' limits count them. Windows counts 1,048,576 bytes as a MB and shows the same file about 5% smaller.

Bitrate is how much data each second of video gets. Too little and the encoder throws detail away: blocks in dark areas, smeared movement, mush in grass and water. More than the picture needs, and the file just gets bigger with nothing to show for it.

How many bits a video needs depends on its pixels and its motion. 4K has four times the pixels of 1080p, and 60 fps twice the frames of 30, which is why YouTube's recommendations climb with both. A talking head needs far fewer bits than gameplay or sport. Clyper's video compressor works to a rule of thumb of about 0.045 bits per pixel per frame for H.264: below that it makes the picture smaller rather than let it go blocky, and the calculator's “looks clean up to” uses the same rule.

Constant quality beats a fixed bitrate when size doesn't matter. Encoders like x264 can aim for a quality (CRF) instead, spending bits where the picture needs them. Use a bitrate when you have a size to hit.

TikTok's and Instagram's help pages give sizes, lengths and shapes but no upload bitrate (as read on October 11, 2026). What they do say: TikTok takes files of up to 10 GB from the web; Instagram wants reels at least 720 pixels on the short side and 30 fps; YouTube Shorts are up to 3 minutes, square or vertical, and as YouTube uploads they follow its recommendations above.

All three re-encode every upload, so the aim is a clean file for them to start from, not a small one. Check a video against what each app takes with the video size checker, and see video sizes for TikTok, Reels and Shorts.

• Discord: 20 MB per file without Nitro, since August 2026 (it was 10 MB before). Nitro Basic takes 50 MB and Nitro 1 GB. A minute of video fits the free 20 MB at about 2.4 Mbps.
• Email: Gmail attaches files up to 25 MB; past that, it adds a Google Drive link instead.
• TikTok on the web: up to 10 GB, far more than a short video needs.

To make a video fit one of these, the video compressor works out the bitrate the same way and encodes it in your browser. For more, read how to compress a video.