Discord’s upload limit
Free (non-Nitro) Discord accounts were capped at 10MB for years. In August 2026 Discord doubled that to 20MB, and the mobile app now checks the size before compression, the same as desktop. This page starts at 20MB; if your friends are on slow connections, a 5–10MB GIF starts playing noticeably sooner. Sources and other platforms are listed on the size limits page.
GIFs that look good in chat
- 480px is plenty — Discord shows GIFs fairly small in the message list, and most people never click to enlarge.
- Keep reactions short — 1–3 seconds of the funny moment loops better than 10 seconds of build-up.
- Ping-pong for seamless loops — the “Ping-pong” direction plays forward then backward, so the loop has no visible jump. It doubles the frames, so keep it short.
- Add a caption layer — under Decorate → Layers you can add text with an outline, which stays readable on both light and dark themes.
Game clips and screen recordings
Gameplay with a moving camera is the hardest content for GIF, because every pixel changes every frame. Crop to the action, use 12fps, and expect around 8–15 seconds at 480px to fit in 20MB. Static UI recordings, on the other hand, can run much longer since only the changing parts are stored.