Upload limits, with sources
Discord's free tier allows 20 MB per file. Gmail publishes25 MB but applies it to the encoded message, so the practical ceiling is about 18 MB. The16 MB figure widely published for WhatsApp is a Business API limit and does not apply to the consumer app. Every figure below is dated and linked to where we read it.
Last verified . Reviewed quarterly and whenever a platform announces a change. Corrections:get in touch.
| Platform | Tier | Limit | Applies to | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discord | Free Raised from 10 MB in September 2026. | 20 MB | People | Discord — File Attachments FAQ secondary checked Discord's support site blocks automated requests, so this number could not be read from the vendor directly. Multiple independent reports dated September 2026 give 20 MB, citing Discord patch notes of 2026-09-08. Older pages still say 10 MB (correct from September 2024) or 25 MB (correct before that). Treat as needing manual re-confirmation. |
| Discord | Nitro Basic Listed as "50MB uploads" on the Nitro pricing page. | 50 MB | People | Discord Nitro pricing page primary checked |
| Discord | Nitro | 500 MB | People | Discord Nitro pricing page disputed checked The same Discord pricing page states two different numbers: the plan feature list says "500MB uploads" while the plan comparison table says "1 GB" for Bigger file sharing. We publish the lower, more conservative figure. Both were read from discord.com/nitro on 2026-09-17. |
| Email (Gmail) | Gmail, personal account Published cap. Applies to the encoded message, not the file you attach. | 25 MB | People | Gmail Help — Send attachments with your Gmail message primary checked Quoted verbatim: "For personal Gmail accounts, the limit is 25 MB." |
| Email (Gmail) | Gmail, practical file ceiling | 18 MB | People | Gmail Help — Send attachments with your Gmail message secondary checked Derived, not published: 25 MB divided by the ~1.37x Base64 + MIME overhead. Google documents the 25 MB cap but does not state the encoded-size behaviour on that page. |
| Telegram | Bot API — send Quoted: "Bots can currently send files of any type of up to 50 MB in size." | 50 MB | API only | Telegram Bot API reference primary checked Bot API only. The consumer Telegram app has a much higher limit. |
| Telegram | Bot API — download Quoted: "bots can download files of up to 20MB in size." | 20 MB | API only | Telegram Bot API reference primary checked Bot API only. The consumer Telegram app has a much higher limit. |
| Telegram | Consumer app | not confirmed | People | Telegram FAQ disputed checked Not yet confirmed from a primary source. Widely reported as 2 GB, 4 GB with Premium. |
| Business API — video | 16 MB | API only | WhatsApp Cloud API — Media reference secondary checked Endpoint rejected automated requests; figure is from secondary reporting of the API docs. | |
| Consumer app — media | not confirmed | People | WhatsApp Help Center disputed checked WhatsApp's help centre rejects automated requests. Published third-party figures for consumer media range from 16 MB to 100 MB and contradict each other. The 16 MB figure that appears on most competitor tools is traceable to the WhatsApp Business API, not to the consumer app. Not published as fact until confirmed by hand. | |
| Consumer app — document Widely reported as 2 GB since May 2022. Sending as a document avoids media re-compression. | not confirmed | People | WhatsApp Help Center disputed checked WhatsApp's help centre rejects automated requests. Published third-party figures for consumer media range from 16 MB to 100 MB and contradict each other. The 16 MB figure that appears on most competitor tools is traceable to the WhatsApp Business API, not to the consumer app. Not published as fact until confirmed by hand. |
How to read this table
Two columns carry most of the information, and they are the two that other published tables leave out.
Applies to separates limits that a person hits in the app from limits that only a bot or integration hits. This single distinction accounts for most of the wrong numbers in circulation. Vendor API documentation is public, versioned and easy to quote; consumer help centres are often behind bot protection. So the API number gets quoted, then copied, until it is the number everyone repeats.
Source says where a figure came from and how much weight it carries.primary means we read it on the vendor's own page. secondary means independent third parties agree but the vendor page was not machine-readable.disputed means sources conflict — including, in one case, a vendor contradicting itself on a single page.
Where we could not confirm a number we were willing to stand behind, the cell saysnot confirmed rather than carrying a figure copied from somewhere else.
Where the published figures disagree
If you have seen a different number elsewhere, it was probably correct once, or correct for a different product. Here is each case.
Discord
- Commonly published
- Discord lets free users upload 25 MB.
- Actually
- The free cap has been 20 MB since September 2026. It was 10 MB before that.
- Why the confusion
- 25 MB was correct until September 2024, when Discord cut the free cap to 10 MB. It was raised to 20 MB in September 2026. Most tools and guides were written against the 25 MB figure and never updated, so a file compressed to "Discord size" by an outdated tool can still be rejected.
Change history
- — Free tier raised from 10 MB to 20 MB.
- — Free tier cut from 25 MB to 10 MB.
Email (Gmail)
- Commonly published
- A 24 MB video will send through Gmail because the limit is 25 MB.
- Actually
- It will usually bounce. Plan for about 18 MB of actual file.
- Why the confusion
- Attachments are transmitted as Base64 text, which is roughly 33% larger than the binary file, plus MIME headers. The published limit is measured after that expansion. This is also why the same file can succeed to one recipient and fail to another: delivery is governed by the smallest limit anywhere in the chain, and Outlook's desktop client applies 20 MB.
Telegram
- Commonly published
- Telegram limits you to 50 MB.
- Actually
- That is the Bot API limit. The app itself accepts far larger files.
- Why the confusion
- core.telegram.org documents limits for bots, and it is the most machine-readable Telegram source, so it gets quoted as though it described the app. If you are sending a video from Telegram on your phone, none of the Bot API numbers apply to you.
- Commonly published
- WhatsApp limits videos to 16 MB.
- Actually
- That number comes from the Business API. The consumer app allows considerably more, and sending as a document rather than as media raises the ceiling much further.
- Why the confusion
- The Business API documentation is public and easy to cite; WhatsApp's consumer help centre is not. Tools copied the API number, and each other, until it became the accepted answer. Compressing to 16 MB throws away quality you did not need to lose.
Why our targets are lower than the published limits
A file that lands one byte over the cap is a failed upload, and bitrate-based encoding cannot hit a size exactly — container overhead, keyframe placement and audio all move the final number a little. So the converter aims below the limit rather than at it.
- Discord: targets 19.2 MB
- Email (Gmail): targets 17.5 MB — and divides by 1.37 first to cover Base64 and MIME expansion
The email case is the one worth understanding, because it is not a safety margin but a genuine unit mismatch: why a 24 MB video fails Gmail's 25 MB limit →
Using this data
The table is published under CC BY 4.0. If you quote it, please link back so readers can see the source and the verification date — a limit figure without a date is how the 25 MB Discord number survived two years past its expiry. A plain-text version for automated use is at /llms.txt.