Discord file size limit in 2026: 20 MB, more with Nitro

Discord's upload limit for people without Nitro is 20 MB. Its Help Center says that as of August 2026 the free limit rose from 10 MB to 20 MB, Nitro Basic offers 50 MB, and Nitro offers up to 500 MB. It also warns that it is experimenting with upload limits and that select users may be able to upload larger files. Everything below is from Discord Support, read 2026-09-29.

What are Discord's upload limits by plan?

Why can an upload fail on Android at 20 MB?

Discord says it now checks the file size before compression rather than after. Desktop and iOS users should generally find uploads easier, but on Android, where source files tend to be larger, you may hit the limit more often than before even though the stated number is higher. Mobile used to compress first and report afterward, so the number you see is now the number that counts.

Which video formats does Discord list?

Among the common file types the page lists MOV and MP4, and it specifies MP4 as video encoded with H264, HEVC/H265 or AV1. A non-image file such as a PDF shows as an embed without a preview of its contents. This page gives no bitrate or resolution rule for video, only the size cap.

What does the Discord page not say?

It does not say whether the cap applies to each file or to the message as a whole, and it does not give a video length, bitrate or resolution rule. It does say that several videos, images or GIFs sent in one message are displayed together as a mosaic. When the answer matters, test with the real files instead of assuming a rule the page never states.

How do I check a generated video against the limit?

Sume's Video inspect 1.0 reads one media.sume.com clip in your workspace without re-encoding it, and its probe reports size_bytes, duration_seconds, width, height and video_codec. The probe is unbilled. Discord writes "20MB" without saying whether it means 1,000,000 or 1,048,576 bytes per MB, so treat 20,000,000 bytes as the safe ceiling.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-inspect \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: discord-size-check-001" \
  -d '{
    "video_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/clip.mp4",
    "frames": false
  }'

What if the file is over the limit?

Sume's Timeline 1.0 documents two levers that change a render: the length (audio.duration_seconds) and the frame (output.width and output.height, even integers from 256 to 2160). Its docs list no bitrate or codec field, and they do not state how those levers change the byte count, so re-render at a shorter length or a smaller frame and probe the result again. If it still does not fit, send the link instead of the file; the webhook side is covered in Discord webhook send file, and general ways to shrink a file in reduce video file size.