Video file size per minute: 480p, 720p, 1080p and 4K

The short answer

File size depends on bitrate and length, not on resolution alone. At the bitrates the compressor on this page uses by default (Compression: Medium, H.264 video plus 96 kbps AAC audio), one minute of video comes to roughly these sizes: 480p 4.9 MB, 720p 10.1 MB, 1080p 21.7 MB, 4K 84.7 MB.

So for a 25 MB email attachment you can send about 2 and a half minutes of 720p, or a little over a minute of 1080p. If your file is bigger than that, the usual reason is that it came straight from a phone, which records at several times these bitrates. Drop it on the tool below to see how small it gets with your own settings.

Size per minute at every resolution and compression level

The compressor has three Compression levels (Light, Medium, Strong) and a Maximum resolution menu (Keep original, 1080p, 720p, 480p). The table shows the target video bitrate it uses for each combination and the resulting size of one minute including the 96 kbps audio track. The 4K rows apply when you choose Keep original on a 4K video, since the menu has no separate 4K entry.

Light gives the best quality and the largest files, Strong the smallest files. Medium is the default and is a sensible balance for watching on phones and laptops.

How long a video fits in 25 MB, 100 MB and 1 GB

This table is calculated from the Medium bitrates above (video plus 96 kbps audio), dividing each limit by the size per second and rounding down to whole seconds. 1 GB is counted as 1,000 MB, the same decimal megabytes used everywhere on this page.

Removing the audio helps most at low resolutions: at 480p Medium, 25 MB then holds 6 min 1 s instead of 5 min 8 s. At 1080p the gain is small (1 min 11 s instead of 1 min 9 s), because the video track is most of the file.

Bitrate explained, and a formula you can use

Bitrate is the amount of data a video uses per second of playback, measured in kilobits (kbps) or megabits per second (Mbps). Resolution sets how many pixels each frame has; bitrate sets how much data is spent describing them. The same 1080p clip can be 12 MB or 150 MB per minute depending on the bitrate it was encoded at.

To estimate any file, add the video and audio bitrates and use: size in MB = bitrate in Mbps x seconds / 8. The division by 8 turns megabits into megabytes. Example: 1080p Medium is 2.799 Mbps video plus 0.096 Mbps audio, about 2.9 Mbps in total; for 60 seconds that is 2.9 x 60 / 8, about 21.7 MB. A shortcut for one minute: Mbps x 7.5 = MB per minute.

You can also turn it around to find the bitrate a limit allows: bitrate in Mbps = size in MB x 8 / seconds. A 3 minute clip (180 s) that must fit in 25 MB can use at most 25 x 8 / 180, about 1.1 Mbps for video and audio together, which points to 720p Strong or 480p.

Why phone videos are so much bigger

A phone records with editing and cropping in mind, so it uses a high bitrate. For 1080p at 30 frames per second in H.264, phones typically record at around 15 to 20 Mbps. With the formula above that is about 112 to 150 MB per minute, five to seven times the 1080p Medium size in the table. 4K and 60 fps recordings are larger still, and the exact figures vary by phone, by setting and by whether the phone uses H.264 or HEVC.

That gap is why compression saves so much: on a phone or laptop screen, a 1080p video at under 3 Mbps still looks sharp for most everyday footage. Dropping to 720p, which is plenty for a chat window, cuts the size by more than half again.

What size fits email, chat apps and uploads

Email attachment limits are commonly around 20 to 25 MB, and some company mail servers allow less. Attachments also grow by roughly a third when they are encoded for sending, so a file close to the limit can still bounce. Aim for clearly less than the limit; with the table above, a minute or two of 720p Medium is a safe size.

Chat apps differ by app and change their limits over time. Many of them recompress videos sent as a normal video message, so sending a file you already compressed to 720p usually gives a better result than letting the app squeeze a 1080p original. For upload forms, check the stated limit and work backwards with the formula.

For longer videos that must keep their quality, compression is not the right tool for every case. A cloud storage link is often better than forcing a 10 minute 1080p video into an email.

• Under 25 MB: up to about 2 min 29 s of 720p Medium, or 5 min 8 s of 480p Medium.
• Under 100 MB: about 4 min 36 s of 1080p Medium or 9 min 57 s of 720p Medium.
• Under 1 GB: about 46 minutes of 1080p Medium, or 11 min 48 s of 4K Medium.

How these numbers were calculated

These are calculated values, not file measurements, prepared on 26 October 2026 from the settings of Anyfeat's own video compressor, the same tool on this page, which runs in the browser (we used Microsoft Edge 156 on Windows). It encodes H.264 MP4 with a video bitrate of width x height x 30 x a factor: 0.08 for Light, 0.045 for Medium and 0.025 for Strong. Audio is AAC at 96 kbps. Size per minute = (video bitrate + audio bitrate) x 60 / 8, with 1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes.

Because the encoder targets that bitrate, real files usually land close to these numbers. Very static footage, such as a screen recording or a talking head on a plain wall, can come out smaller, and very busy footage, such as confetti, water or fast camera moves, can come out somewhat different. The MP4 container adds a small overhead. Try it with your own clip in the tool above and compare the result with the table.

The resolution menu limits the short side of the video, so a vertical 1080x1920 phone video counts as 1080p and gets the same bitrate as a horizontal 1920x1080 one. The compressor never makes a video larger: if the result would not be smaller, you get the original back.

Tips for getting under a size limit

• Lower the resolution first. Going from 1080p to 720p more than halves the size and is hard to notice on a phone. For a small file, Medium at 720p is often a better choice than Strong at 1080p.
• Trim before you compress. Cutting 20 seconds of waiting at the start saves more than any setting change.
• Remove the audio when it is not needed, such as for product clips or screen recordings without narration. It saves 0.7 MB per minute (96 kbps x 60 / 8).
• Use Strong only when Medium at a lower resolution still does not fit.
• Leave some margin under email limits, because encoding for sending makes attachments larger.
• Keep your original. Compression removes detail that cannot be brought back, so compress a copy for sending.