Which bitrate for which platform
The bitrate YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn actually expect for your resolution and frame rate — and what your file will weigh at that setting. Encoding above what a platform keeps is bandwidth you give away.
Where each number on this page comes from
Bitrate advice circulates without sources, and the same figure can be a platform's own requirement or somebody's habit. Those are not the same thing, so this page says which is which:
| Label | What it means |
|---|---|
| Published specification | Taken from the platform's own documentation, at the value it states. |
| Common practice | Widely used and safe, but not documented by the platform. We say so rather than presenting it as a requirement. |
| No published specification | We looked and could not find one. The tool shows a dash instead of a number. |
Two of these platforms publish nothing
YouTube publishes a complete upload table. LinkedIn publishes hard limits. For Instagram and TikTok we could not find a published bitrate specification. Figures circulate widely for both, but we have not been able to trace them to platform documentation — so they belong in the category of common practice, not specification, and this tool will not print them as if they were one.
So this tool refuses to make one up. For those two it tells you what is actually true: shoot at the resolution and frame rate the app captures at, keep the audio at 128 kbps or better, and let the platform re-encode. There is no secret number that survives their pipeline.
Why encoding higher is money you give away
Every platform re-encodes on arrival, onto its own ladder of resolutions and bitrates. Anything you send above what that ladder keeps is discarded — it does not reach a single viewer.
What it does reach is your upload. A 4K file at double the recommended bitrate takes twice as long to send, on a connection that is usually the slowest link in the chain. The recommendation is not a ceiling on quality; it is the point past which you are only paying.
File size here is plain arithmetic — (video + audio) × duration. Real encoders spend more on complex shots and less on still ones, so read it as the order of magnitude.
Frequently asked
Where do these numbers come from?
From the platforms themselves. YouTube publishes a full upload bitrate table (SDR and HDR, standard and high frame rate); LinkedIn publishes file limits rather than a recommendation. Both were read from their own help pages. Nothing here is estimated.
Why does Instagram or TikTok show no number?
Because they do not publish one. Every “recommended bitrate for Instagram” you find online was guessed by somebody and then copied. We would rather say we do not know: match the resolution and frame rate the app captures at, keep audio at 128 kbps or better, and let the platform re-encode. Going higher changes nothing it keeps.
Should I encode above the recommendation?
It buys you almost nothing. The platform re-encodes everything to its own ladder; the extra bits are discarded on arrival. What a higher bitrate does cost you is upload time — and on a slow connection that is the difference between posting today and posting tomorrow.
Why is the high frame rate figure so much bigger?
Because twice the frames means twice the information, roughly. YouTube's own table asks for about 50 % more at 50 or 60 fps than at 24, 25 or 30 — not exactly double, because consecutive frames at a high rate resemble each other more and compress better.
Is the file size exact?
It is arithmetic: (video bitrate + audio bitrate) × duration. Real encoders vary around the target — variable bitrate spends more on complex shots — so treat it as the order of magnitude, which is what you need to know whether it will fit and how long it will take to send.