Discord's upload limit, by plan

Upload limit by plan

The limit is per file, not per message. Values and dates are quoted from Discord's own help centre and developer pages; the source column links the exact page. Where Discord gives no date, the table says so rather than guessing.

Server Boost Level 1 (2 boosts) is left out on purpose: Discord's perk list for it names no upload change. All pages were read on 1 October 2026.

Two caveats Discord prints itself. Its File Attachments FAQ opens with: "We're currently experimenting with various file upload size limits. Select users may have the ability to upload larger file sizes." And its Server Boosting FAQ says some servers are in an experiment that lets them raise the file limit to 250MB by buying Larger File Uploads for 5 boosts. So if your own limit looks different from the table, an experiment is the likeliest reason — the table shows what Discord publishes for everyone.

What changed when

Discord's help centre gives the newest change; its developer change log, whose entries go back to July 2017, gives the two before it. Nothing earlier than that is dated on any Discord page we opened.

1. Before the cut: 25 MiB. Discord's change log says the default limit changed "from 25 MiB to 10 MiB". When the 25 MiB limit itself began is not in the change log or in any help-centre article we read, so this page gives no date for it — or for any older figure.
2. 10 MiB for users, date not stated. The change-log entry dated 16 December 2024 says the 10 MiB limit "is already active for users and bot users". It does not say which day it started for people. Discord's Nitro article still carries the explanation it gave for the cut: "In order to maintain our service without compromising on quality of storage, we decided to reduce the free file size upload limit."
3. 16 January 2025: webhooks follow. The same entry says the 10 MiB limit took effect for webhooks and interaction responses on that date.
4. August 2026: free goes to 20 MB. The File Attachments FAQ: "As of August 2026, the free upload limit is 20MB (up from 10MB)". The developer change log records the same rise, "from 10 MiB to 20 MiB for users, bots, webhooks, and interaction responses", in an entry dated 3 September 2026.
5. Same change: size is checked before compression on phones too. Discord says the mobile app used to try compressing a file first and only then say it was too big; now "the number you see is the number that counts". It adds that on Android, "you may hit the size limit more often than you did previously, even though the stated number is higher."

Nitro Basic and Nitro: Discord's pages state the current values but no date on which they took effect, and none of the server-boost upload limits is dated either. Those cells say "Not published" instead of borrowing a date from a news story.

What "20 MB" means in bytes

Discord's developer reference states the default as "20 MiB for all users" — binary megabytes. smallcord reads every MB figure on this page that way, the same as its tool pages: one MB is 1,048,576 bytes, so the free limit is 20,971,520 bytes and Nitro Basic is 52,428,800. Discord gives no byte count for "1GB", so smallcord counts Nitro as 1,000,000,000 bytes, the smaller of the decimal and binary readings — a file the box calls "fits" fits under either.

A worked example: a 25,000,000-byte video is 23.84 MB in these units. It is too big for the free limit by 3.84 MB and fits Nitro Basic, Nitro and both boosted-server limits. Because Discord checks the size before compressing (see above), that is also the number its app compares.

If your file is too big

The box above links the right page for your file type. In short:

• A picture: the Image page re-encodes it in your browser until it fits.
• A GIF: the GIF page turns it into a much smaller silent video that plays like a GIF, or shrinks it as a GIF.
• Audio: the Audio page re-encodes it at a bitrate computed to fit.
• A video, or anything else — a ZIP, a PDF, a save file: Split cuts it into numbered parts that each fit, and rejoins them on the other end. Splitting does not make the file smaller; the parts add up to the same size.

Emoji, sticker, banner and icon limits

Those have their own size and pixel rules, separate from the upload limit. They are listed, with Discord's sources, on the pages that make them: the Image page for a still emoji, sticker, profile banner, server banner, server icon or role icon, and the GIF page for animated emoji, stickers, banners and the server avatar.