Video to GIF Converter

Transform video clips into animated GIFs. Customize quality, size, and duration.

Drop your video here

or click to browse (MP4, WebM, MOV)

How to Convert Video to GIF

Add your video - Drag and drop or click to browse. Supports MP4, WebM, MOV, and most common video formats.
Set your clip - Choose the start time and duration for the section you want to convert. The video player lets you preview the exact moment.
Adjust quality - Set the output width in pixels and frame rate (FPS). Lower values produce smaller files.
Create GIF - Click the button and wait while frames are extracted and encoded. A progress bar shows the status.
Download - Preview the result and download your animated GIF, or send it straight to the GIF Text Editor to add a caption.

Optimizing GIF File Size

GIF files can get very large because the format doesn't compress as efficiently as modern video codecs. Here are practical ways to keep file sizes manageable:

Duration is the biggest factor - every second adds many frames. Keep GIFs under 5 seconds for social media (under 15 MB for most platforms). Width has a squared effect on file size - a 480px GIF is roughly 4× larger than a 240px one. FPS directly scales file size - 10 FPS looks smooth enough for most uses and is half the size of 20 FPS. For screen recordings or UI demos, 8 to 10 FPS is usually sufficient.

How Each Setting Changes File Size

Starting from a 5 second clip at 480 pixels wide and 10 FPS (a typical 4 MB result), here is what changing one setting at a time does:

Baseline (5s, 480px, 10 FPS)

4 MB

Duration to 10s

8 MB

Width to 720px

9 MB

FPS to 20

8 MB

Width to 320px

1.8 MB

The practical reading: width is your most powerful lever because its effect is squared, and dropping it is usually the least visible sacrifice on the small screens where GIFs get watched. Exact sizes depend on the footage; motion-heavy clips run larger.

GIF or Video: Which Should You Make?

	Animated GIF	MP4 / WebM video
File size	Large (no inter-frame compression)	10 to 20 times smaller for the same clip
Colors	256 per frame	Millions
Sound	None, ever	Supported
Autoplay and loop	Always, everywhere	Depends on the platform and its settings
Works in	READMEs, forums, docs, chat, email	Anywhere with a video player
Best for	Short reactions, UI demos, tutorials	Anything longer than about 10 seconds

If you land on the video side of that table, our GIF to Video tool covers the reverse trip.

Where to Use GIFs

GIFs are supported nearly everywhere: Slack, Discord, GitHub issues and READMEs, email newsletters, Twitter/X, Reddit, Tumblr, and most messaging apps. They're ideal for short demos, reaction clips, tutorials, and UI animations. For longer or higher-quality content, consider using MP4 or WebM video instead, as they offer much better compression.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is my GIF so large? GIF stores every frame with lossless per-frame compression and cannot exploit the similarity between frames the way video codecs do. Reduce duration, width, or FPS to shrink the file. A 5 second, 480 pixel, 10 FPS GIF typically lands between 2 and 8 MB depending on how busy the footage is.

What is the maximum duration? You can set up to 30 seconds, but GIFs beyond 10 seconds get very large very fast. Most chat apps and social platforms cap uploads somewhere between 8 and 25 MB, so shorter clips are far easier to actually share.

Does this work on my phone? Yes, though encoding is slower on phones because the frame extraction and GIF encoding lean on the CPU. For long clips or high frame rates, a desktop browser finishes noticeably faster.

Does my video get uploaded while converting? It never leaves your device. The frames are pulled from the video, drawn to a canvas, and encoded into a GIF by a Web Worker, all inside the browser tab. Even the Add Text shortcut is local: it hands the finished GIF to our GIF Text Editor through your browser's own storage, with no network transfer at any point.

Why does processing take a while? The tool decodes the video, captures each frame individually, then runs the GIF encoder over the whole stack. That is genuinely CPU-heavy work, and it is running on your machine rather than a server farm, which is the trade for keeping the video private.

Should I make a GIF or just share the video? If the destination plays videos inline, MP4 is smaller and looks better. GIF earns its keep where video does not autoplay or embed: README files, forum posts, documentation, and anywhere you want guaranteed silent looping with zero play buttons.