01
Add your video
Drag in a video file — MP4, MOV, WebM, or MKV. The file is read locally; nothing is uploaded.
Make video smaller
Compress video online, right in your browser.
Reduce video size and download a smaller MP4 — no sign-up, nothing uploaded.
This tool lets you compress video online to make it smaller — no upload, no watermark, no account. Got a clip that's too big to email, post, or send? Pick the part you need, choose a quality preset, and download a compressed MP4. Your video never leaves your device — it's decoded and re-encoded right here in the page, on your own machine.
- No upload
- Runs 100% in your browser.
- Smaller MP4
- See the size saved before you download.
- Trim as you go
- Compress just the range you want.
How it works
Three steps to a smaller video.
02
Pick a range & quality
Choose the start and end you want and a preset — Strong for the smallest file, Balanced for the best trade-off, or Light to keep the most quality.
03
Preview & download
The video is compressed in your browser. Play it on the page to check it, see how much smaller it is, then download the file.
Quality presets
Strong, Balanced, or Light — your call.
Strong — scales down to 480p for the smallest file. Best for sharing and tight storage, with the most quality loss.
Balanced — 720p with a strong size cut and good quality. The recommended default for most clips.
Light — keeps the source resolution for the least quality loss, with a smaller saving. Best when quality matters most.
Strong and Balanced aim at a fixed height, so they only make the picture smaller if your video is taller than that — given a smaller video they enlarge it to reach the target instead. The measured results below show what each preset actually did to two real clips.
Measured, not estimated
How much smaller, in real numbers.
“How much smaller will my video be?” has no single answer — it depends on what the video contains. So rather than guess, we ran this tool on freely licensed clips and wrote down exactly what came out. Every figure below was produced by the same in-browser encoder this page uses, and the sources are linked so you can repeat it.
| Preset | Output size on screen | File size | Change | Time to encode |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Source, uncompressed | 1280×720 | 20.7 MB | — | — |
| Strong | 854×480 | 3.8 MB | −82% | 1 m 59 s |
| Balanced Default | 1280×720 | 9.3 MB | −55% | 3 m 17 s |
| Light | 1280×720 | 13.3 MB | −36% | 3 m 35 s |
| Preset | Output size on screen | File size | Change | Time to encode |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Source, uncompressed | 1920×1080 | 5.0 MB | — | — |
| Strong | 854×480 | 0.3 MB | −93% | 37 s |
| Balanced Default | 1280×720 | 1.4 MB | −73% | 1 m 41 s |
| Light | 1920×1080 | 4.7 MB | −7% | 3 m 19 s |
Most of the saving comes from the size of the picture, not the quality dial. Compare the preset that scales down with the one that doesn't: Strong took 82% off the talk and 93% off the animation, while Light — same encoder, just no resize — managed 36% and 7%. If you need a real size cut, letting the video get smaller on screen does most of the work.
On busy, generously encoded footage, Light barely helps. It shaved only 7% off the 1080p animation — and took 3 m 19 s, the slowest run in either table. Detailed, fast-moving video at its original resolution simply needs the bits it already has.
Balanced leaves your picture alone if it is already 720p or smaller. It targets 720p, so the 720p talk came out still 1280×720 — 55% smaller on quality alone — while the 1080p animation really was scaled down to 1280×720 (73% smaller).
The smallest file is also the quickest to make. Strong was the fastest run on both clips (1 m 59 s against 3 m 35 s for Light on the talk) because there are far fewer pixels to encode. Expect roughly the length of your clip: the 95-second talk took about 1.2× its own length on a modest 2-core laptop. No server is doing this — it is your machine, on one thread.
How these numbers were produced
Each clip was compressed in headless Chromium on a 2-core Intel Core i3-8130U at 2.2 GHz, using this page's own encoder —
H.264 video with AAC audio at 128 kbps, -preset veryfast, and the
quality setting attached to each option (CRF 30 at 480p for Strong,
CRF 26 at 720p for Balanced, CRF 23 at the source
resolution for Light). Whole clips were encoded, so the file sizes compare directly.
Sizes are binary megabytes (1 MB = 1,048,576 bytes), matching what the tool shows you.
Sources: NASA ScienceCasts: T2AR on the ISS (public domain) and Big Buck Bunny (CC BY 3.0, Blender Foundation). Your own results will differ with the source, and encoding time will differ with your device — but the direction and rough scale of the savings hold.
Performance & privacy
Private by design — and honest about speed.
Nothing is uploaded — your video is compressed entirely on your device, so it stays private.
Compression is a full re-encode that runs on a single thread in the browser, so it can take a while on longer or higher-resolution clips — a progress bar shows how it's going.
A smaller file means a lower bitrate or resolution, so there's some quality loss; the presets make that trade-off clear, and Balanced is a good place to start.
No account, no watermark, no install — it runs in the browser you already have open.
Need more than a smaller file?
Turn the video into notes and a transcript.
If you want the words, not just a smaller file, Video to Notes can transcribe a video and write a summary, key points, and a timeline you can download. For YouTube links and longer videos, the Chrome extension does it right in your browser.
- Full transcript plus an AI summary
- Key points and a clickable timeline
- Export to Markdown, PDF, or HTML
FAQ
Compress video questions
How do I compress a video online?
To compress a video online, drop a video file onto the box on this page or choose one. Pick the part you want and a quality preset (Strong, Balanced, or Light), then select Compress video. The video is re-encoded into a smaller MP4 in your browser and offered as a download you can also preview first.
Is my video uploaded to a server?
No. The video stays on your device. It is decoded and re-encoded entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded, and the smaller video is returned straight to you as a download.
How much smaller will my video be?
It depends on the preset and, more than anything, on the video itself. In our own measurements a 95-second 720p talk came out 55% smaller on Balanced and 82% smaller on Strong, while a 1080p animation lost 93% on Strong but only 7% on Light. The measured results above list every figure, the exact settings, and the source files. After a run, the page also shows your own before and after size and the exact percent saved.
Why does compressing take a while?
Compression is a full re-encode that runs on your own device, with no server doing the work. In the browser it runs on a single thread, so longer or higher-resolution clips take longer. A progress bar shows how it is going — keep the tab open. Shorter clips are the fastest, and so is Strong: it scales the picture down, so there are far fewer pixels to encode. Light, which keeps the source resolution, is the slowest.
Which video formats are supported?
Common video files work — MP4, MOV, WebM, MKV, and more. The output is always a compressed MP4 (H.264 video with AAC audio) so it plays almost everywhere. Pick any range; very long or large files just depend on your browser and device memory.
Do I need to sign up?
There is no sign-up. Because everything runs in your browser, there is no usage limit on compressing video.
Try it now
Make your video smaller.
No account, no upload — just a clip and a quality preset.