How to shrink a video for text or email while keeping captions readable

Carrier MMS limits are brutally small — AT&T and T-Mobile cap around 1MB to send, Verizon around 3.5MB — and email tops out around 25MB on most providers. Hitting those targets while keeping burned-in captions legible means compressing carefully, not just aggressively. You can compress your video free here, entirely in your browser.

The actual size limits

Text message (MMS): AT&T caps around 1MB, T-Mobile around 1MB to send and 3MB to receive, Verizon around 3.5MB. If you're texting a video, assume you need it under roughly 1MB to be safe across carriers — anything larger risks the message failing to send or getting silently compressed by the carrier into something that looks much worse than what you intended.

Email: Most providers cap attachments around 25MB (Gmail's limit, which many others match or come close to) — far more headroom than MMS, but still tight for more than a short clip at reasonable quality.

Why captions turn to mush at MMS-sized targets

Fine detail like small burned-in text needs more bitrate to stay sharp than broad footage does. Compressing hard enough to fit a 1MB MMS target is aggressive by any standard, and text is usually the first thing to blur into illegibility under that kind of pressure. Two ways around it: use a larger caption font before burning captions in, or accept a slightly bigger file size if the platform allows it.

The right order: captions first, compress last

Burn in captions, then compress once, as the final step — not compress, then add captions, then compress again. Two compression passes compound quality loss for no benefit over doing it once, after the captions are already part of the frame. See our post on compressing video without losing subtitles for the full breakdown of that ordering.

Is there a way around the size limit entirely?

Yes — a cloud link (Google Drive, Dropbox, or similar) sidesteps size limits completely, since you're sharing a link instead of the file itself. The tradeoff is the recipient has to click through rather than watching inline in their messages app, which matters for quick, casual sharing where inline playback is the whole point. For anything longer than a very short clip, or when quality matters more than instant playback, the link is usually the better call.

Practical targets to aim for

For texting: aim under 1MB to be safe across all major carriers. For email: you have much more room, up to roughly 20MB to leave some margin under the 25MB cap. In both cases, resolution matters as much as bitrate — a shorter clip or a lower resolution (720p instead of 1080p) gives you more bitrate budget to keep captions readable within the same file size ceiling.

The bottom line

MMS limits are tighter than most people expect — often under 3.5MB, sometimes under 1MB — and hitting them while keeping captions readable means compressing once, last, after captions are already burned in. Try WavyVid's compress tool free, pick your target size, and preview before you send.